


Proxima Centauri (Your Absence, and Mine)

by LittleRedCosette



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Falling In Love, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Murder, Pining, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2019-10-19 01:57:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 26,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17592527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRedCosette/pseuds/LittleRedCosette
Summary: What possibly offends Arthur the most is that, not only is someone trying to set him up as a murderer, they honestly seem to think he’d be so predictable about it.Clearly, whoever is exacting this vendetta against him has spent too much time listening to Eames talk about how unimaginative he is.





	1. rionnag i.

**Author's Note:**

> Friends,
> 
> Should I be starting yet another story when I haven't finished two other pretty meaty fics? Probably not, but this idea won't go away so here you are.
> 
> Some of you might be aware that _Proxima Centauri_ is the next-closest star to Earth after the Sun. 
> 
> You might also know it is the title of truly trashy science fiction novel.
> 
> I’m not sure if these facts are relevant for the story at hand. Probably not, but there you go.
> 
> **Keep an eye on the chapters.** This is a double time-lined story. I’m going to be skipping back and forth from chapter to chapter so prepare for me to go overboard with my usual crap. If you are new to my “usual crap”, welcome to the lower circles of Hell, where chronology is a myth and the author is allergic to linear storytelling.
> 
> **This is Arthur/Eames endgame.** Just, yeah. I promise it’s endgame. I mean serious _endgame,_ though. You’ll see.
> 
> Tags to be added.
> 
> It would be splendid to hear from you. I hope your January has been kind and full of happiness.
> 
> Your friend,  
> LRCx

.

.

**rionnag i.**

**( then)**

.

.

The second bullet nicks his elbow so perfectly, he sort of wants to congratulate the shooter.

The pain is blinding.

Somewhere between the sick-swallow-swoop feeling of being bashed on the funny-bone and the white-hot shredded feeling of a tiny compact piece of metal slashing through skin and muscle, there is an acute and terrible sensation that is a bullet grazing an elbow corner.

Arthur, for want of a better, less shameful word, shrieks.

.

.

On the plane, an air hostess actually tears up at the sight of him all alone with his arm in a sling trying to hoist a backpack into the cabin space above his seat.

She presses him gently into Row Ten and does it for him with an indulgent smile on her painted lips.

_Lindsey,_ her name tag reads on her crimson and navy blazer. Her nails are perfectly manicured, and her hair is scraped back off her face with so much hairspray he can smell it despite her liberally applied perfume. There’s a tiny, tiny smudge of mascara in the corner of her right eye that he suppresses the urge to point out with great difficulty.

Later, when she’s doing her rounds, she hands him a can of pepsi he didn’t ask for and asks him if he’d like an extra pillow free of charge.

He accepts, more out of astonishment than need. When she brings it for him, he tucks it under his injured elbow and actually, he does feel much better for it after all.

Lindsey beams at him, and he feels a soft, alien sort of pleasure to see her so happy.

.

.

The fifth bullet grazes his hip.

His leg buckles reflexively as the pain shoots down to his knee and he just about manages to turn his topple into a roll, oozing blood across the ground. Before he has time to think about all the bacteria he just willingly embedded in an open wound, he’s on his feet and running again.

The entire dockyard stinks of fish guts. He holds his breath even when he’s shooting, and it fucks up his aim just like his mom always said it would.

He stumbles around a corner, feigns two left turns and does another roll around just to really encourage that infection no doubt creeping into his hip already.

He gains ground quickly. His clothes are soaked in blood and oil.

.

.

On Row Ten, he sits in Seat A, the window seat.

The wing of the plane is going to obstruct most of his view, but he doesn’t much care because all he’ll be missing is the Atlantic Ocean and he spent the first eighteen years of his life staring out at it through his bedroom window every day.

Seats B and C are taken up by a couple of newlyweds, Carolyn and Martin. They’re wearing matching Pluto headbands, the long black ears dangling in front of their faces. She’s got a photograph of the pair of them on a Space Mountain ride printed on her t-shirt and he’s wearing a Lion King badge near his collar bone.

They waggle their wedding rings in his face by way of explanation, and Arthur asks them why they thought throwing their hard-earned cash at a corrupt, commercial conglomerate was in any way an appealing celebration of their love for one another.

He doesn’t exactly mean to say it. His elbow is sore and his hip is itchy and it just comes out.

Only, Carolyn and Martin aren’t offended. They both burst out laughing, rolling their eyes and nodding and they tell Arthur,

“Yeah, yeah, funny guy. We know, we’re the ridiculous ones.”

Arthur doesn’t know why they aren’t angry, but he doesn’t question it.

It’s only once the flight takes off that he looks down at his chest and realises the sweatshirt he pulled out of the stolen backpack Lindsey so kindly helped him with has the unmistakable outline of Mickey Mouse splashed over his torso.

He grins despite himself.

.

.

Arthur doesn’t know much about the shooter.

He’s a white male, under six-foot tall, with a dominant left hand but passable confidence with his right.

He’s probably being paid to do this.

He wears sneakers, dark like the rest of his clothes, and he’s both clever and stupid enough to wear body armour. Arthur gets him twice in the chest to no effect beyond a stagger and a few curse words.

Except, then Arthur slips between two closely bound fences, and the shooter doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of catching him after that.

He keeps shooting, though.

The twelfth bullet catches Arthur just below the ribs, white slice scarlet in a slash across his side.

He doesn’t shriek that time, but later, when he’s sitting in a cracked bathtub stained red and stitching up his skin with a needle that he’s not entirely convinced he sterilised properly, he does burst into tears.

.

.

On the plane, Arthur reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and pulls out the neatly folded sheets of paper he had kept safe through the scattering of fourteen bullets, miraculously unstained by his blood.

Carolyn and Martin are asleep, their heads resting against each other, still wearing those godforsaken headbands, a sight so saccharine it makes Lindsey smirk and Arthur gag.

He unfolds the papers carefully, doing his best to keep his left hand active, although every time he moves his thumb it feels a little bit like getting shot in the arm all over again.

On the first page, there’s a list of names Arthur had decrypted on his laptop right there in the warehouse, his horror mounting almost as quickly as his panic.

On the third page, there’s a list of co-ordinates that he doesn’t need to check to know their relevance.

On the eighth page is an email exchange he intercepted by sheer good fortune. He’s memorised it already, but he keeps it with the rest, for what little it is worth.

There’s another sheet of paper that isn’t uniform A4 like the rest. It’s a small lined page ripped out of a notebook, hastily scribbled on in blue biro.

_24 Bluestone Drive_

_EDINBURGH_

The handwriting is small, the vowels disproportionate to the consonants. Arthur traces the heavily pressed lines of each letter, as if he might glean something more, perhaps garner some measure of comfort from their individual strokes.

The plane rattles a little, and one of the newlyweds makes a grumbling sound in their sleep.

Arthur carefully folds the pages up, awkwardly sliding them back into his pocket, closes his eyes and pretends to dream.

.

.


	2. rionnag ii.

.

.

**rionnag ii.**

**( then)**

.

.

After the incident at the dockyards, it takes Arthur a week to get out of America.

There are a number of reasons for this, starting and ending with the fact that getting shot in the elbow is very, very painful.

In that time, he manages to steal well over a thousand dollars in cash, which is less thanks to his expert pickpocketing skills and more a reflection of both how goddamn expensive Disneyworld is, and how distracted the idiots going to Disneyworld are right from the very moment they reach Orlando.

He glares defiantly at the suspicious look the woman at the desk gives him when he pays for a single flight to Edinburgh in cash, and she takes pity on him when he feeds her a sob story about a sick nephew and hard times at the bank.

She hands him his boarding pass, 10A on the 20:20 flight, and he makes his way through to the gate, stopping only briefly to buy the cheapest burger he can find, which he promptly forces down with a grimace and several swigs of overly acidic orange juice.

He doesn’t sleep much on the flight, too distracted by the shooting pains in his arm and the prickly sensation that someone might draw a gun on him at any moment. He’s completely unarmed, not to mention he has no way of checking if his PASIV is still safe.

When they land ten hours later, the charming smile of Lindsey the air hostess is there, pulling his bag out of the cabin luggage for him and wishing him a safe and pleasant day.

Arthur smiles at her as best he can, shuffling slowly in time with the sleepy rhythm of the crowd all the way off the plane. His exhaustion must do him several favours at customs, because he doesn’t have the energy to be nervous as passport control spends just a fraction of a minute too long looking at his documents before handing them back to him.

He nods, offering the uniformed woman a tiny salute, and soon enough he’s past the arrivals gate.

At the bureau du change, he offers up the leftover dollars he accumulated and gets almost five hundred sterling pounds in return. He doesn’t enjoy rolling up several cigars of crisp twenty-pound notes, but it’s all he can do, stuffing them in various pockets and compartments of his backpack.

He keeps two tens, a five and the coins in the pocket of his jeans, struggles momentarily with heaving the backpack onto his good shoulder, and follows the signs for the express bus service.

Arthur watches thirteen buses come and go before summoning the courage to get on.

He had checked the location of 24 Bluestone Drive all of once, from an internet café one evening when need outweighed risk back in Orlando. All he knows for sure is, he needs to go all the way to the end of the line on one bus, then get another two-thirds of the way.

It’s not his first time in Scotland, nor even his first time in its capital. It greets him with its reliable mixture of scattered showers and blustery sunshine, the bus windows fogged up and the wheels splashing heavily through puddles which Arthur pretends very well doesn’t rocket through the gash in his side like a brand.

The babble of voices is a pleasant enough, a distracting lullaby of Lowland lilts and heather balms, and he hangs onto the pole he grips just a bit too tightly, leaning into it with his forehead pressed to the cold metal.

The _ding_ of the bell is loud, the heave-seize of the engine rumbles under their feet, and he gets through the memorised list of co-ordinates now stuffed in the bottom of his backpack twice before he gets off at a stop called _St Mary’s and St Michael’s._

It’s stopped raining. Cracks of bright, cheerful blue have appeared in the dense fog of clouds and the glitter of wet on the sidewalks is patchy.

Bluestone Drive is lined with neat little front yards, bookended by church steeples that tower over the rooves in steady reminders of God’s omnipresence, and Arthur is very close to amused.

Number Twenty-Four is like every other house on the street, terraced and tall, with a little wooden gate that has a loose latch and a smattering of bluebells across the tiny patch of greenery pretending to be a yard.

The door is red, the exact same shade as Number Twenty-Six, and there’s actually a welcome mat in front of it. Arthur stares at it, feeling suddenly thrown.

The little wall that the front gate is attached to is covered in moss and hidden behind it he can see there’s a nicely planted line of snowdrops, too.

Surely this can’t be right.

He stares at the bright, brassy numbers of _24_ drilled into the door above a large knocker, which he takes delicate hold of, testing the weight in his hand.

There’s a curtain pulled over the front window, and no light coming from it.

Behind him, a car rolls past. He feels the movement of it in his chest like breath between his lungs.

He lets go of the knocker, takes hold of it again and before he can stop himself, knocks sharply three times.

For a long minute, there’s no answer.

Arthur glances at the snowdrops and the bluebells, at the welcome mat under his feet. He’s very close to knocking again when finally, he hears it.

The soft creak-creak-step of feet on old wooden floorboards.

Arthur can picture the man inside very clearly, then, as clearly as he pictures a dream before building it.

Padding down the stairs, approaching the door. Peering through the pinhole and then leaning back, suspicious and surprised, maybe holding a gun loosely in his hand just in case.

He can picture him frowning, or perhaps even scowling, before putting the gun away and ruffling his hair in his hands or scratching his cheek and taking a deep breath before –

The door opens, so abruptly it takes Arthur by surprise.

A little hitch of breath sneaks into Arthur’s mouth, a tiny gasp of air, and he freezes.

Eames is wearing a thick woolly sweater and a pair of dark loose jeans, the hems of which are tucked into a pair of bright yellow socks. Any surprise he feels at Arthur’s impromptu arrival is expertly hidden, and instead he glances down at the Mickey Mouse on Arthur’s sweater and promptly snorts, grinning.

“Enjoy your holiday, dear?” he asks in a pleasant tone, eyes lingering on the sling Arthur’s not really wearing properly.

When he looks back at Arthur’s face, there’s a tight line of concern that might be in part for Arthur but is also for the very real possibility that Arthur hasn’t shown up all by himself.

Arthur stalls, then, as he looks at Eames, all his explanations and justifications falling out of his head at the sight of a hickey on the side of Eames’ neck, like he’s an actual teenager.

Before he can ask, Eames beats him to it with a question of his own.

“Does this have anything to do with the job offer you _didn’t_ send me?”

Arthur blinks, opens his mouth and finds his tongue too dry to speak.

He swallows, his teeth too big for his mouth as he says,

“What?”

Eames folds his arms across his chest. Either he’s put on weight, or he’s got another sweater on under the woollen monstrosity he’s already wearing. Possibly both.

“Someone sent me a job from your secure email six days ago,” Eames says, sounding most unimpressed.

“How do you know it wasn’t me?” Arthur asks, to which Eames just snorts, reaching up to rub the scruff of beard on his jaw.

“Get in,” he says roughly, stepping aside and gesturing down a hallway with a tall ceiling.

Arthur sidles past him, trying not to limp too badly, but he’s pretty sure he sees Eames roll his eyes anyway.

“Kitchen’s straight down,” Eames says, and suddenly a hand is lifting the weight of the backpack off Arthur’s shoulder.

He lets it go with a groan of relief, ignoring Eames’ snicker as he makes his way to the kitchen. Even before he reaches the open door, he’s enveloped in a wafting warmth of ginger and brown sugar.

“Got company!” Eames says loudly, as if to reach over Arthur’s head, and that’s all the warning Arthur gets before he meets Eames’ husband.

.

.

He found the address scribbled in a random page in the middle of his notebook.

“I don’t know where you live,” he had muttered at Eames’ retreating back one day, louder than intended because Eames had turned around, walking backwards to throw him a grin.

“I wrote it down for you,” Eames had said, then promptly jogged towards his gate, leaving Arthur stranded and grumpy in a crowded airport to ponder where the hell he’d written it down.

It wasn’t until halfway through his next job that Arthur turned the page in his notebook to continue his dream time calculations and found himself staring at a scribble of blue pen.

_24 Bluestone Drive_

_EDINBURGH_

“Asshole,” he’d muttered, and pretended not to be impressed that Eames had gotten hold of his notebook without being caught.

.

.

There’s a man in Eames’ kitchen.

More than that, there’s a really quite good looking man in Eames’ kitchen. He’s tall, with floppy curls of dark tawny hair and a pair of black glasses slipping down his nose. He’s _barefoot_ and he’s _cooking_ and there’s a joke in there, lurking just out of sight _._

The man turns around just as Arthur steps into the kitchen, and immediately offers him a cautious, questioning half-smile.

He’s got a large chopping knife in his hand, the blade positively grinning, and still he looks like the least-threatening thing Arthur’s ever seen in his life.

“Taking in strays, now, darling?” the man asks, and he doesn’t stop looking at Arthur, which is the only reason it takes so long for Arthur to realise he says _darling_ the same way Eames does.

Warmly, with purpose, just shy of playful.

“Arthur’s going to make use of the spare room,” Eames says as he prods a bewildered Arthur further into the room, all the way to a heavy, huge wooden table that’s covered in bottles and jars haphazardly closed and upturned.

Arthur refuses Eames’ gesture towards a seat, and there’s absolutely no accounting for the very deep frown he feels embedding itself into his brow as the man laughs.

The knife swings lazily in his hand, covered in little green flecks, and in his other hand he’s holding a generous handful of chives.

“He’s taller than you described,” the man says, before dropping the chives on a chopping board and holding out his hand for Arthur to shake.

He does, with utmost reluctance, and has barely let go before he turns his accusatory eyes to Eames, who’s chuckling.

“Arthur, this is James. James, meet the esteemed and quite ineffable Arthur.”

When Arthur does nothing more than raise his eyebrows, the man, _James,_ barefoot, handsome, Scottish, long-or-maybe-short-sighted James, who chops chives very neatly and has the most indecent laugh Arthur has ever heard, grins.

“I’m sure Eames has told you all about me,” he says with a knowing glint in his eyes as he waves the knife tip directly at Eames’ face before returning to his chives.

“Actually, no,” Arthur says, feeling put out. He feels like he’s going to give himself whiplash, between glaring at Eames and staring at James.

Eventually, he settles on Eames’ softly raised eyebrows long enough to say, as petulantly as he can,

“You told me you lost your name in a bet.”

At the kitchen counter, James snorts, shaking his head as he taps up and down on his heels on the tiled floor.

Eames, leaning his hip against the monstrous table across from Arthur, shrugs.

“I did.”

“Which I won,” James says, with an air that suggests he _likes_ telling people that, either because he always wins, or because usually he never does. Then, in an infuriating peak of good hosting, he continues, “Eames, for godsake. Show Arthur where to go and let him rest, he must be shattered. Do you need some painkillers?”

He’s utterly earnest, some awful hybrid of Paddington Bear and a Labrador, and Arthur has no basis for the way his eyes burn at the look James gives him.

“Got stitches that need checking?” Eames asks, in a rare display of tenderness, still holding Arthur’s bag and looking at him with those big, intrusively blue eyes of his.

Arthur nods, swallowing around the peachstone lump in his throat.

“Come on then,” he says. “Food won’t be ready for another four hours, anyway.”

“Just because _you_ fry everything you can get your hands on,” James snaps without heat, and Eames’ mouth twitches.

Never, not once in all his life, has Arthur felt less in sync with his surroundings than he does right now.

Between one blink and the next, Arthur’s moving again, Eames’ hands on his shoulders coaxing him back out towards the hall, and those creaky floorboards.

Without meaning to, Arthur looks down at his left shoulder, just far enough to see a gold band wrapped around the fourth finger on Eames’ hand.

“How did you even hide it?” he asks, the words falling out of his mouth like marbles weighing down his tongue.

Eames is so close behind him, he feels rather than hears his snicker of laughter.

“I’m very good at what I do, you know,” he murmurs.

At the top of the stairs, there’s a splashed oil painting of two intertwining trees, coarse brown branches and thick, sultry green leaves locked in an embrace. On the third step, Arthur stops to stare at it.

“Which one of you did that?” he asks, feet planted into the carpet like he’s considering growing roots himself.

Eames’ hands are gentle and warm through the layers of Arthur’s clothes.

“We both did it,” Eames replies, in an odd and stilted voice the colour of embarrassment.

Arthur laughs a little, not unkindly, but he thinks Eames will be cross with him all the same.

“It’s good,” he says in recompense, and for a moment he thinks Eames isn’t going to reply.

Then he starts pushing Arthur up the stairs again with those gentle, warm hands and he says, quite simply,

“Of course it is.”

There’s something in that, far beyond arrogance or narcissism, beyond the smug, peacock manner with which Eames flourishes his forges. A kind of surety, a confidence or a faith that Arthur thinks has very little to do with the painting.

He’s not an envious person by nature, but he’s got space for it, sometimes, that greenish heat of covetousness.

If Eames notices, he doesn’t mention it.

.

.


	3. nyota i.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Darlings,
> 
> Thank you thank you for the kudos and comments! It's always a delight to hear from you ^_^
> 
> Yours,  
> LRCx

.

.

**nyota i.**

**( now)**

.

.

He goes to Ariadne first.

He knows she’ll be the easiest to convince, because only the week before she was saying how utterly bored she is with cutting and pasting the same job over and over, no matter how nice the regular deluges of cash into her bank account are.

She opens the door of her apartment with a glowing grin on her face, ushering him inside in a flurry of hand gestures.

“Yes,” she says even as she’s hanging his coat up on the stand by the front door for him.

“I haven’t even asked you yet,” Arthur chuckles, wandering through to her living room where the twittering of the tv is on low. Outside the window, Paris is brewing a gold, buttery sunset through the slits of its streets.

Ariadne makes a loud scoffing sound from another room, returning to his side quickly bearing two tall stem glasses and a chilled bottle of white wine. Her eagerness is infectious, and Arthur doesn’t even bother with a token refusal before taking the wine and clinking their glasses.

“You might not want it when I tell you,” he warns her as he sinks into her armchair and curls up on the closest end of the couch.

She makes another of those snorting scoffs, almost choking on her wine in her haste to respond.

“Arthur, you do not understand how _devastatingly boring_ working with Eli is. I mean, I appreciate the hook-up. He pays well and the jobs have literally never interfered with school. Do you know why?”

She raises her eyebrows painfully high, clearly expecting a verbal response. Arthur smirks.

“Why?”

“Because they are so easy, I seriously think I could have done them while I was in high school.”

Arthur can’t tell if Ariadne is damning Eli or backwardly complimenting her high school self with that one, because he has it from her own lips that she originally wanted to be a vet and hadn’t so much as seen a blueprint with her own two eyes was until she was in her senior year.

“This one will really fuck up your school work,” he says instead of commenting further on Ariadne’s high school career.

This, at least, seems to reach her a little better. She blinks, sitting up straighter and holding her wine glass close to her throat.

“What’s the job?”

.

.

Cobb calls on a Thursday.

Arthur ducks outside the bar to answer, lingering on the clustered street scented with cigarettes and rainwater.

 _He’ll pay well,_ Cobb says, like Arthur’s ever been susceptible to the temptation of monetary wealth alone.

.

.

He goes to Yusuf second.

Arthur knows he’ll be the hardest to convince, because what was once _rarely goes into the field_ very quickly became _never goes into the field_ thanks to the shimmering psychosis of Dominick Cobb.

Apparently, not even getting Dom’s share of the Fischer Job payment was enough to pay for the therapy required after driving that van through the first level for them.

Mombasa is heavy with the encroaching spring heat. Sweat drips down his back as he skirts through the streets, and the tightly packed air hums with a thousand trembling voices.

The bell of the shop door jingles when Arthur enters, midday barely scraping overhead, and he is promptly greeted by an incredibly overfed ginger cat.

“What?” he grunts at the cat when it plonks itself down in front of him and glowers at his shoes like it’s considering clawing them.

Before he can think better of it, Arthur reaches down and scratches behind the cat’s ears. Immediately, the enormous cat rolls over, squashing his hand against the dusty shop floor and purring loudly enough to rattle the glass bottles lining the walls.

“Well, there’s no going back now,” a voice chuckles, and he looks up to see Yusuf standing in the open doorway that leads to the back room. “You’re her faithful servant for life now.”

Arthur glowers at the cat as it wriggles over his fingers.

“No, I’m not – _ow!”_ he snarls down at the cat, when it claws deep into his hand the moment he makes to pull away.

Its little demon teeth and claws are so deeply embedded in the meat of his hand that even when he lifts up, the entire cat just comes off the floor with him.

He glares up at Yusuf, who’s grinning wildly.

“Practicing her mothering instinct,” Yusuf explains with a helpless shrug, and when Arthur looks back down he realises the cat isn’t overfed at all, but in actual fact very heavily pregnant.

Which probably means he shouldn’t violently shake it off.

It takes almost eight minutes to coax his hand out of the cat’s stubborn grip with absolutely no help from Yusuf, blood speckling over his palm and fingers, and there are even a few up cuts of torn flesh. As soon as he’s free, the cat turns tail and trots away with the air of a toddler pretending they weren’t really interested in that toy after all.

Yusuf’s still grinning rudely, but he at least has an antiseptic wipe to hand, as well as a generous pouring of whisky in a crystal tumbler.

“So, I take it you didn’t come to offer to cat-sit for me when the kittens arrive?” Yusuf asks in a pleasant, conversational tone that Arthur doesn’t trust at all.

“I did not,” Arthur replies, before washing down the acid of his words with a burning sip of whisky. The wipe stings over the nicks in his skin, and he wipes up a line of blood that’s almost reached his wrist already.

Yusuf sighs a little glumly before asking in the voice of the executed,

“What’s the job?”

.

.

Arthur’s already worked his way through most of a bottle of merlot when Cobb calls.

The cold air hits him hard when he gets outside, phone buzzing in his hand; hits him almost as hard as the call itself.

 _I really think we should take this one,_ Cobb says, and Arthur can’t help but agree.

 _Tell Saito I’ll get them to London by Wednesday,_ he replies.

He begs a cigarette from a stranger near the entrance before going back inside.

.

.

He goes to Eames last.

It’s not a question of convincing Eames. It never has been.

He opens the door of his Madrid apartment slowly, and his eyes are narrow with questions, most of which Arthur hopes he intends to keep to himself.

“Making house calls, now, are we?” Eames drawls after a moment too long to be quite comfortable, stepping aside to let Arthur in.

It’s spacious and full of hot, Spanish sunlight. Arthur can see all the way to the other end of the apartment from the front door, the slotted shadows of the window panes cutting the room into geometric angles.

He follows Eames’ lead towards a large wooden table surrounded by mismatched chairs, waiting patiently while Eames pours them two gin and tonics without asking.

This is the third of three visits where Arthur has been served alcohol without asking for it, and Arthur’s not sure if that’s a reflection of himself, the company he keeps, or the very nature of dreamsharers. Despite this, he accepts the glass and takes a long drink.

“What’s the job, then?” Eames asks.

Arthur runs his flat palms around his glass, wetting them with condensation.

“How do you know it’s a job?” he asks.

He doesn’t know why he’s bothering to be coy about it. Whatever the reason, Eames is less than impressed; he doesn’t respond other than to take a slow sip of his gin. He stares at Arthur over the rim of his glass, accusatory and cold.

“One of Saito’s senior directors was murdered,” Arthur says.

Eames raises his eyebrows politely, as if Arthur had just told him the time, or the football score.

“It was a contract kill. They won’t be found, or if they are, the real person responsible isn’t going to get caught. Saito has his suspicions. He thinks he knows who was behind it, or if they weren’t, _they’ll_ know who was. He wants us to find out for sure.”

There’s a long moment filled with the lemon clink of ice and the muffled sounds of the city coming through the huge windows that stretch across the west facing wall of the apartment.

Arthur knows Eames is going to say yes. Maybe right now, maybe next week. Either way, he’ll say yes.

Rather than worry about the troubled line of Eames’ brow, Arthur sips his gin and eyes his surroundings instead. The kitchen is well stocked, the worktops cluttered with knives and jars and several stacks of scrappy books.

Two huge, intricately detailed rugs cover most of the stained wooden floor, and there are canvases and paintings dotted all over, some hanging up and others stacked haphazardly against the walls.

There’s one tilted sideways that it takes him a moment to figure out, and he’s startled when he realises Eames is watching his face, as if measuring his reactions.

He can feel the burn in his cheeks that he doesn’t acknowledge.

“Well?” he asks, aiming for impatient, although he’s pretty sure it comes out closer to flustered.

Eames wrinkles his brow briefly, before running the joint of his thumb up the bridge of his nose, as if pushing up a pair of glasses that aren’t there.

“Where’s the mark based?”

“Splits his time between London and Tokyo. He’s in London right now.”

Eames nods, then glances towards the window, and the sun splashing over his face catches him just right, golden brown as a Stranglers song, and for a brief moment Arthur is seized by a flash of hot, terrible hunger, an unmanageable kind of want that exists only in the spaces Arthur’s impulses cannot reach.

He stares at the tight, vulnerable strain of Eames’ bared throat.

Too quickly, the moment passes, and the ache recedes, and Eames’ chair is loud scraping back over the floor as he makes his way to the kitchen area.

“Staying for dinner?” he asks with his back half-turned.

“Thanks,” Arthur replies.

He tries to keep his eyes on Eames’ face, or hands, or back, or hell maybe just his ass. Instead, as nice an ass as it is, his gaze slips back to the painting leaning against the wall.

It’s magnificent; an exact and precise copy of Honthorst’s _Saint Sebastian_. Perfect, of course, as all Eames’ best forgeries are. The glossy shine of the paint, the saint’s skin pale and worn, the arrows scattered across his body oozing tiny trickles of scarlet.

He recognises the canvas, the vast height of it and the cut of the corners, a punch in his gut. If Arthur were to stare hard enough, he’s pretty sure he would be able to see straight through the paintwork, to the painting it’s covering up with layers upon layers of oil and acrylic.

Two trees, intertwined. Their leaves ablaze and their branches coiled about each other, in a sharp and dark embrace.

“Are you still allergic to coriander?”

Arthur chokes on his laugh, his throat dry.

“Last time I checked,” he replies.

“Damn,” Eames says quietly, almost to himself, before adding, “You really are such a nuisance, you know.”

Arthur doesn’t have a response to that one, but he doesn’t think he’s supposed to. He glances at the painting once last time, before draining his drink and moving closer to the window, to watch the city plunge slowly into dusk.

.

.

 _They’d been together for almost twenty years,_ Cobb says on the phone, as if he thinks Arthur won’t remember, as if the details of every job he’s ever done aren’t burned into his skull.

Then again, the jobs always did fall off Cobb’s radar easier than Arthur’s. Perhaps he’d forgotten already. The jobs never seem to cling to Cobb the way they do Arthur.

 _How did they kill her?_ Arthur asks, not because he wants to know, but because he really should.

There’s no sense in shying away from it.

Cobb’s sigh through the phone scrapes like a car crash.

 _They slit her throat,_ he says, and Arthur doesn’t know if that’s a good way to go or not.

He thinks it’s probably one of the worst.

.

.


	4. rionnag iii.

.

.

**rionnag iii.**

**( then)**

.

.

Eames takes him straight to the bathroom; black tiles and white porcelain, a long sheet of mirror across from the roomy shower that Arthur categorically doesn’t want to think about.

The bathroom smells of peppery soap and lemons, and Arthur lets himself be shepherded onto the closed toilet lid.

Eames crouches in front of him, untying the wonky sling from Arthur’s shoulder and eyeing his sweater critically.

“What happened to your arm?” he asks.

He smells of chives and sandalwood; his cheeks are pink and the skin of his nose is dry and peeling.

Arthur eyes the bulky double-sweater he’s wearing with greater scrutiny. Before he can ask Eames if he’s at least no longer contagious, he asks again,

“Arthur? Arm. What happened?”

Arthur grimaces, letting his arm go floppy in Eames’ gentle grip.

“I got shot in the elbow – _don’t laugh,”_ he snaps.

“I’m not,” Eames lies with such flagrance, Arthur feels his own cheeks burning with embarrassment.

He scowls, and Eames offers him a placating smile.

“I’ll stop,” he offers, sniffling again. “I’m not laughing.”

Arthur pulls back to lean against the cistern of the toilet, wincing at jarring of his ribs. Eames’ laugh drops, an echo inside his half-open mouth.

“It hurt a lot,” Arthur says, mostly by accident, because Eames is nothing if not the most disarming man Arthur’s ever met.

Ever so gently, Eames takes Arthur’s arm back in his grip, opening a cupboard under the sink with one hand and pulling out a veritable toolkit of supplies. He’s still staring at Arthur’s sweater.

“How attached are you to your jumper?” he asks, and Arthur does his best to glower.

“Not as attached as I am to my arm.”

Eames’ face splits into another grin.

“Right, good,” he says, pulling out of his bag a pair of heavy duty scissors. “Sorry Mickey.”

With that, he starts slicing up through the sweater.

It’s methodical work, and Arthur watches him with a separate, cool feeling of apathy. The cotton has stuck, caramel tacky to the gauze wrapped around his elbow.

Eames smothers his hands in anti-bacterial with a resolved look. He’s careful, and suspiciously quiet.

He holds the tip of his tongue between his teeth as he concentrates; his lips are chapped and the rims of his eyes are red and Arthur rather thinks he’s never looked more comfortable, more peaceful, than he does right now, crouched on his bathroom floor, wearing two woollen sweaters and a wedding ring.

Arthur watches his left hand, doesn’t even try to hide it, and he expects Eames to say something, but he doesn’t. He just shifts his weight between his knees, opening sachets of antiseptic wipes and softly wiping the blood from Arthur’s elbow.

So instead, Arthur makes a deliberate, telling sigh and says, as full of accusation as he can manage,

“You’re married.”

Eames’ mouth goes wonky; splits apart in a look Arthur’s never seen before, and it’s unfathomably charming.

“Well,” he says wryly. “Technically it’s not a marriage.”

Arthur bites his lips together, and only stops himself from pulling back because Eames’ fingers are dangerously close to the deep graze that has been plaguing Arthur for over a week now.

It doesn’t matter what it’s called, Arthur thinks. Marriage or not, it’s still enough to make a man blush.

He wants to ask twelve questions at once. He wants to know about the painting on the wall above the stairs; the man barefoot in the kitchen and the jars on the table and the chives on the chopping board so fresh the only place they could have come from is the garden.

He wants to know when Eames met James, and if it was before that night in the bar when he bought Arthur vodka and teased him for being a dream snob.

He wants to know when Eames married James, because it’s only been possible for less than a year, and Arthur’s worked with him twice in that time and what he wants to know, really, is when Arthur helped plan an extraction that relied almost exclusively on Eames seducing the mark, was Eames already _married?_

“You never said anything,” he says, petty little nips in his skin like his stitches.

Eames’ fingers are cold as they manoeuvre his forearm back and forth, testing the pull of the strips.

Arthur bites the insides of his cheeks and swallows down his whimper of pain.

Eames, that grin, that sweater, that ring.

“You have other friends who are married, Arthur.”

“Yeah, that I know about,” Arthur grumbles none too shyly.

Eames rolls his eyes without discretion as he pulls out two more butterfly stitches from his med kit.

“Well there’s no hiding the Cobbs, is there?” he asks, pulling an exaggerated look of nausea. “Couple of lovestruck idiots.”

“There’s a middle ground between Dom and Mal Cobb,” Arthur retorts through gritted teeth, a bite of pain and frustration cording his words, “and burying the existence of your partner so far out of sight that –”

He cuts himself off as he stretches his arm across his chest, allowing Eames to tuck the gash tighter together with one of the strips.

Eames’ brow is furrowed, his eyes quick and sharp, and even still there’s an amused tuck to his mouth.

“That what?”

“Nothing – ow!” Arthur grunts, scowling down at Eames as he lets go of his arm.

“Sorry,” he says, before approaching more carefully with the second stitch. Then he continues, cat scratch smug, “I see, you’re taking it as a personal affront that I managed to hide something you couldn’t find.”

Arthur lets out an exasperated sound, huffing, only to wince when his side twinges. Eames gives him a look that says _I noticed that._

“I’m taking it as a personal affront that you didn’t tell me yourself,” Arthur replies, and his voice is taut with the truth of it.

He _is_ upset, more upset he thinks than he has cause to be. Eames has violated no real code of conduct by not telling him, and it’s not like Arthur’s ever been forthcoming about his own personal information.

It’s just that, well. This feels _big._ It is big.

Arthur has watched Eames stare down the barrel of a gun without so much as flinching, and Arthur, he’s let him.

It would have been different, he thinks, if he’d known there was someone out there in the world waiting for Eames to come home.

He half expects Eames to scold him for his pettiness, perhaps even his hypocrisy. He rests his arm on the side of the sink as directed, and allows Eames to slowly pull up his t-shirt, revealing the loosened bandaging beneath, damp with sweat and blood and liberally applied antiseptic cream.

As he peels it back with a grimace, Eames asks with a bite of anger,

“Exactly how many people do you think I’ve given this address to?”

It’s defensive, which is about as self-conscious as Eames ever gets. The colour in his cheeks rises, and it could be for any reason at all.

The bloody streak across Arthur’s side is oily and aching. Exposed to the air, it stings horribly and Arthur has to hold his breath to bite back tears that have nothing whatsoever to do with the gut-punch of humiliation at how reasonable Eames’ question is.

They’re practically the same age and yet somehow, Eames has always had a way of making Arthur feel awfully young.

“Christ Arthur,” he mutters as he runs a damp cloth around the inflamed injury. “This is a mess.”

Arthur promptly chokes on a retort about just how well _Eames_ would do stitching himself up in a grotty motel bathroom with supplies that belong in a kid’s dress-up set.

Although, of course, even if Eames did find himself tugging a slice in his torso closed with a dull needle, it wouldn’t matter; there’d someone waiting at home to fix him right up when he got back.

“Oi,” Eames mutters. “Don’t cry, you’ll be fine.”

Arthur bites his lips together, staring over the top of Eames’ head at the milky blue patterned tiles.

“It really hurt, you know,” he mutters around the lump in his throat.

Eames gives him another of those disarming, scrutinising looks. His hand rests briefly on Arthur’s knee, his eyes on his face, and there’s no telling which is the gentler touch.

“Yeah,” he says, and there’s an apology in there.

Hidden, like a secret yet to be revealed.

He makes short work of the gash in Arthur’s side, and the one across his hip, with minimal comments regarding Arthur’s general ineptitude. He’s also gracious enough not to so much as raise his eyebrows at the way Arthur crunches down on two tramadol like tic tacs when they’re offered.

Instead, he simply gestures through the open bathroom door to the next room along the hallway and says,

“Why don’t you wash up, and I’ll put some fresh clothes in your room. Come down when you’re ready. Or sleep, if you like. James won’t be upset if you skip dinner.”

Arthur gives him a questioning glance. Eames shrugs with a grin.

“I’ll be mortally offended, but he’ll forgive you.”

Arthur nods, stifling a yawn with the back of his wrist, mostly to hide whatever expression is burdening his mouth.

“Thanks, Eames,” he says.

Eames just shakes his head, that doe-eyed look of disgraceful allure.

“You’re a mess,” he says, as if he doesn’t think Arthur knows that already.

“You’re married,” Arthur says again, just for posterity, or perhaps like it’s the same thing.

Eames just laughs, an echo of joy inside his closed mouth smile, before he turns around and jogs back down the stairs.

.

.

That job, last year. Three weeks in San Diego, a brisk chill in the air, almost as bitter as Eames’ temper.

“You’re not sleeping,” Arthur said, in response to the fifth ball of scrumpled paper Eames threw at his head.

There were rings under his eyes that didn’t belong there, that didn’t make sense.

They do now.

.

.


	5. nyota ii.

.

.

**nyota ii.**

**( now)**

.

.

Arthur gets to London first.

He’s the point man, it’s his job to be everywhere first.

Every one of his thoughts have been inflamed with gruesome anticipation of the job ahead for days now, ever since Cobb’s phone call a week ago.

He flies into Gatwick, and despite the business class ticket, bubbles and velvet, he never quite manages to settle. He’s antsy and snappish, and when he closes his eyes there are loud colours and itchy sounds swallowing him up in a cocoon of anxiety.

He sinks two vodkas and pretends to sleep for four hours.

It’s closing in on midnight by the time he gets to the hotel reception, having battled his way valiantly through the Saturday night crowds of staggering heels and open neck shirts that populate central London.

“Welcome to London, Mr Carruthers. Is this your first time staying with us?”

The receptionist’s name is Natalie, which she mentions at the beginning of an incredibly long spiel about the hotel that honestly merits some sort of applause at the end.

She’s exceedingly charming, just like the doorman and the concierge who had greeted him three metres before Natalie, each with a degree of focus that only serves to put Arthur more on edge.

Against all of his creature comfort instincts, Arthur doesn’t actually like five-star hotels. They make him nervous, what with their deeply ingrained etiquette and overly attentive staff.

Typically, he’d choose a three star for his teams. They’re comfortable and safe enough, and generally speaking don’t pay their staff quite well enough to merit the sharp, hawkish attentions of the likes of Natalie here.

Unfortunately for Arthur, he’s staying in London under the guise of a business associate of Kiyonari Saito. Nobody who works seriously with Saito stays in less than five stars.

So, he smiles politely at the neatly polished Natalie and says,

“I have not had the pleasure, Natalie, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy it.”

“Well, if there’s anything at all we can do to improve your stay, do let us know, Mr Carruthers. Paul will be able to take care of you from here.”

Paul, it turns out, is a well-groomed man in his twenties, whose prim received pronunciation is not quite as a perfect as Natalie’s. His smile is a little intense, and he’s all thumbs in his haste to collect Arthur’s bags, ears burning scarlet.

Tired from his journey and beyond caring at this point, Arthur barely makes it to his room before shoving a tip at Paul and snapping the door shut behind him as soon as the bags are inside the room.

The room which, of course, is shiny as a new coin; spacious and lilac-scented. He eyes the bed hungrily, can already feel the coolness of the sheets against his cheek, the arresting disappointment of denying himself it. He’s a long way from ready to switch off.

He has itineraries to write, emails to send, not to mention a phone call with Saito in – _seven minutes._

“Shit, shit, shit,” Arthur mutters, scrambling for the internal phone on the table near the door.

“Natalie, hi,” Arthur barks in an overly harried voice as soon as she picks up. “I’m expecting a business call from Tokyo at twelve-thirty. Please reroute it to my room immediately.”

 _“I certainly shall, Mr Carruthers,”_ Natalie replies, a trill in her _r_ that makes him do something between grin and roll his eyes.

Once he’s put the phone down, Arthur’s very tempted to just curl up on the floor next to the table and wait.

Instead, he heads for the bathroom, with its stupidly inviting heated tiles and fluffy towels. He splashes some cold water over his face before helping himself to the first of what might well be several whiskies from the generously stocked mini-bar, which he promptly drops into a coffee from the machine strategically placed near the window.

At twelve-thirty on the dot, the phone rings.

Arthur takes his seat on the floor, his papers fanned readily about him with his laptop on his knees and picks up the phone.

“Carruthers,” he says, just in case Natalie turns out to be not so good a listener.

His concerns, however, go unfounded.

 _“Are you settling in nicely, Mr Carruthers?”_ a familiar voice asks, leaning heavily on the name.

It’s Saito. He sounds exhausted, or at least, as exhausted as a man like Saito ever sounds. His tone is plainly an attempt at some sort of teasing but there’s no heart to it, none of his previous sharpness.

It’s nine-thirty in the morning over there. Arthur’s willing to bet Saito hasn’t left his office in days.

“Thanks for the suite,” Arthur replies.

He knows better than to ask proud, grieving men how they are. He’s well versed in evasion these days and in any case, Saito’s mental wellbeing really isn’t his responsibility.

 _“Personally, I find English luxury somewhat tedious,”_ Saito replies.

Arthur does laugh at that, because he mostly agrees.

“It’s a shame we have appearances to maintain,” he acknowledges. “Your accounts are in order, sir.”

 _“And how goes the redecoration?”_ Saito asks promptly.

Arthur glances at the list near his left ankle out of habit.

“The planners will be arriving tomorrow. The decorators are scheduled the day after. We’ll be done in no time.”

_“I’m glad to hear it.”_

It occurs to Arthur, sitting on the cosy rug of his hotel suite, phone propped between his shoulder and ear, that he doesn’t exactly know Saito very well.

Of course, he _knows_ Saito. He researched the hell out of him two years ago when he agreed to take on the job from Cobol Engineering. But he doesn’t know Saito, not in a personal manner.

Not like Cobb, who found him in Limbo; or even like Eames, who took it upon himself to give Saito some proper training in subconscious defences for a suspiciously low fee after the ripples from the Fischer Job had settled.

Saito is an ex-mark, twice-employer with money to burn and a questionable moral code.

All Arthur knows about Saito that feels in any way relevant to the here and now is that little apartment he gave his mistress, with the green woollen carpet that Nash fucked up with rookie indolence.

Did his wife know? Did she have other partners of her own, secret rendezvous spots in secluded corners of the world?

Does it matter, now? Now, when she’s dead and gone, for reasons unclear?

Arthur does not ask such questions, no matter how heavily they weight upon his mind.

Saito runs quickly through their laundry list. He doesn’t offer up any personal information and Arthur doesn’t ask any. It’s thorough and professional and soon enough Arthur has access to a subsidiary business account tucked in a pocket of the vast web that Saito has spun around the world.

It’s been a long time since Arthur was anything less than comfortably wealthy, but even his stomach does a little flip at quite how much money is abruptly at his disposal.

It’s precisely quarter to one in the morning when Saito ends the call.

Arthur’s always admired punctuality.

He stretches, eyes drifting to the bed for the umpteenth time, and drains his coffee.

Ariadne will be the first to arrive. In fact, she’ll be touching down at Stansted in less than eight hours.

Her hotel is a brisk four-minute walk from his own, Cobb’s not much further out.

Yusuf had attempted to maintain some sort of intrigue when he informed Arthur that he wouldn’t require a hotel booking.

 _Don’t you worry about that,_ he had said. _I’ll sort myself out._

Arthur hadn’t bothered telling him he knows all about his house in Rotherhithe. Instead, he’d made a disbelieving, judgy sound and told Yusuf to call him if he changed his mind.

Sometimes, Arthur wonders if anybody really knows what his job entails, or just how good at his job he is.

Eames doesn’t have a hotel, either.

Arthur’s never been to Eames’ London home, but he knows it exists. He knows somewhere in this city there is a flat with a long-paid mortgage that can be found under the name Edward Cooke. He’s never looked it up, and there are a hundred reasons why, but mostly there’s just the one.

Arthur doesn’t like researching things about Eames. He likes being told them. He likes to be confided in, entrusted with whatever nuggets of truth Eames offers up.

This desire for a space in the world as the confidante of a man who gets paid to tell lies is an unexamined aspect of Arthurs’s being. He’s not interested in looking too closely at why one of his most closely guarded memories is the way Eames looks when he opens his own front door, any of them.

(There’s a bright red door in Edinburgh, and nobody will ever open it again the way Eames did, with amusement and derision and an astonishing amount of trust.)

A yawn smacks him in the mouth, catching sharp in the back of his throat as he stands up, knees cracking and head pounding.

The bed calls to him. As does the shower, and the coffee machine, and the big mounted TV and the mini-bar.

On the floor, hidden between folds of documents, his cell phone buzzes.

He picks it up and promptly opens a text from a more than familiar number.

_You’ll still be a point man in six hours. Get some sleep._

The _while you can_ is left to interpretation.

He grins, quickly texting back,

_You woke me up._

At first, he thinks he got it wrong. There’s a long pause, during which time he turns on the shower, letting it steam up the edges of the mirrors as he slowly undoes his tie, the phone propped up behind a sink tap, waiting.

He drops his tie over the towel rail, along with his shirt, and is just slipping his belt with a snicker-whick of leather through the loops when his phone buzzes again.

 _Just open the mini-bar and have some whisky. You’re on a billionaire’s payroll you know. Embrace the 5* lifestyle,_ Eames replies.

Arthur eyes the unfathomable list of soapy condiments littering the bathroom. The cascade of water bouncing off gleaming tiles and the bowl of soft gold light it’s all bathing in.

He snaps a photo of the embroidered towels above the mirror and sends them, just to prove a non-point.

Too late, he sighs as he realises his cut-off chest is visible in the mirror in the photo.

Eames, for once in his life, is prompt to respond.

_Nice nips._

“Asshole,” Arthur chuckles, dropping his phone back onto the sink ledge and ignoring the flurrying buzz of incoming texts, all of which are no doubt obscene, in favour of making the most of his five-star shower.

The water, of course, is perfect.

When he gets out, Eames has sent twelve texts.

The last of the lot is still visible in the locked screen.

_Only if you ask nicely, though, I’m just that sort of boy_

There are any number of things that could be premising, and he laughs without opening the text thread.

Instead, he turns off his phone, slipping into a pair of pyjama pants and making another coffee, then gets to work.

.

.


	6. nyota iii.

.

.

**nyota iii.**

**( now)**

.

.

Ariadne arrives later the next morning, by Eurostar, much to Arthur’s severe disapproval.

She’s daisy fresh and white lily sombre as she meets him at a café close to the station, within walking distance of enough recognisable businesses that his suit and her formalwear aren’t quite out of place. He buys her brunch, and she doesn’t pretend to be surprised.

She is surprised, on the other hand, when he slides her folder across the table, and she opens it to find her hotel reservation.

“You’ve _never_ given me five-star,” she says with such pointed accusation Arthur almost, _almost_ apologises.

“It’s never been necessary before,” he says instead, moving some more eggs around his plate in a distracting manner.

Ariadne’s eyes briefly dart to his food. She looks unconvinced but knows better than to say anything about it.

“There’s nothing _necessary_ about five-star, Arthur,” she mutters, and her giddy grin is well contained in a pinched, rosewater look. “It’s just _nice.”_

“Well, it’s necessary now,” Arthur corrects her. “According to anyone who might go snooping in Saito’s records, you’re here to scope out new office space for his London branch. You don’t work for a man like Saito and sit anywhere other than first class.”

Her neat little shrug of pleasure is tempered by the mention of what exactly has brought them to this point, sitting across from each other at a table near Kings Cross, with the drizzle of April rain tickling London’s streets outside the window.

She straightens up in her seat, seized by her purpose, and asks,

“So, everyone will be here?”

It’s a little pointed, for reasons Arthur can’t interpret. It’s neither coy nor defensive; if anything, she sounds nervous, which she hasn’t done in a while, not since her first job.

There are reasons to be nervous about this job; Arthur has counted each and every one of them. Weighed and measured their blast radius impact using the same precision with which he doses out somnacin and criticism.

“Yes,” he replies, rather than address these myriad concerns.

Better to let her lead. He can only guess at where her thoughts have taken her.

Nonetheless, he is almost thrown by the directness of her approach. He had expected her to sidle with conscientious artistry before getting to the point. Instead, she places her cutlery neatly on either side of her plate, locks her fingers together over her unfinished food and asks,

“Do you think Cobb’s going to be able to handle it?”

Arthur doesn’t encourage her by smiling, but the sentiment is there. He can taste it in his coffee, and the cream of his eggs.

She was always bold, right from the beginning, and it’s growing. She’s candid and unphased.

“Do you think I’d have taken the job if I thought otherwise?”

Her incautious look, then, is brimming with her answer. It is the same reply he’d give his own reflection.

A coupled clash of, _of course you would_ and _I know you wouldn’t,_ a word for which does not exist. At least, not in any language Arthur knows.

It’s in his nature to be offended by generalisations of his character, but not to express them, so he sips his coffee and changes tack with cool indifference.

“We’ll need a lot of options. You’re probably going to design three times more dreams than we need.”

He already knows this isn’t a hardship for her, and Ariadne’s scoff confirms it. It’s a stilted, prickly sound that doesn’t suit her clean edged, earnestly good humour.

“I’m sure I’ll manage,” she replies with a twinge of saccharine acuity.

She’s matured into her role in the world of dreamshare; inhabits the responsibility of the architect in a way that reminds Arthur of Yvette, the first architect he ever teamed up with. She carries the same rooted oak energy of someone who knows what they are capable of, has learned first-hand her limits.

It wrongfoots him, then, kerb edge too close, when she leans on her forearms and asks in a hard voice,

“Why aren’t you more worried?”

Arthur is genuinely surprised. This time, he doesn’t hide it from his face.

“What makes you think I’m not?” he asks, clasping his fingers together as he takes in her buttoned mouth and her eyelashes, knitted together with seams of black.

Ariadne holds herself a little straighter, as if perhaps slighted by his question.

“I’ve seen you worried before,” she says. “It didn’t look like this.”

Arthur smiles, mirthless. He could list on one hand all the times Ariadne has seen him genuinely _worried._

His reputation has not been built on an inability to control his most basic response to anything from mild threat to blind panic.

“Your concern is noted,” he replies,

While she hasn’t the self-control to prevent the colour that rises in her cheeks, she at least knows better than to act ashamed of herself.

Never let it be said that an apprentice of Arthur’s, however briefly that might have applied to the woman before him, ever backed down easily.

“We can’t afford to make this personal,” she says instead of apologising.

“I agree,” Arthur replies, gesturing to her documents and pushing aside his mostly full plate. “Enjoy your luxury facilities, Miss Waters. Cobb’s arriving soon and he’ll want a full briefing tomorrow.”

Ariadne inclines her head in mock gratitude, some of the warmth returning to her expression as she leaves, her kitty heels quiet and precise on the stone floor.

Arthur waits another quarter hour before paying the bill and following her out of the bell chime door.

He walks briskly down the wind trap of York Way, all the way back to the station, from where he hails one of the countless cabs lingering in the byroads.

The city is grumpy and boisterous, even for a Sunday.

Punters spills out of pub entrances, clutching their pints and cigarettes, herded behind rope barriers and resting against the windows to huddle out of the way of the weather. If nothing else, he can’t fault the English for their commitment to their reputation.

Midday is barely kissing his heels as he tips the cabbie and gets out a stone’s throw from Covent Garden, which he’d chosen on a whim and promptly forgotten just how disgracefully packed it would be.

Somewhere close by, a street performer is enchanting a crowd with cheap parlour acrobatics over a weak outdoor sound system. Music lingers in shops doorways and a busker scrapes for shrapnel in a questionably expensive looking guitar case.

Arthur walks at a casual pace, pretending to be distracted by the gravitational pull of the square’s central columns. Tourists stumble eagerly over the cobblestones in their haste to shelter themselves in the market’s overpriced embrace.

Deep within the pit, an operetta is rapidly approaching its climax.

He eyes each candy shine window in turn, takes in the rich scents of coffee and cocoa and amethyst perfumes, as the sky grumbles and the crowds jerk and sway to its rhythm.

It’s a while before he notices a grey leather jacket, hesitating in the corner of his vision.

He doesn’t react, other than to slow his curious tourist’s gait to a glacial pace.

Each shop display is inspected with thorough care and attention; he’s almost tempted to go into Whittard’s, maybe pick up a tea or two, just to see if his shadow will accompany him.

In the end, he’s saved the inconvenience of a decision when his shadow does it for him.

A body brushes past him, no more jostling and thoughtless than the hundred others that have done in the last ten minutes.

All except for the flat hand that presses unsolicited and fleeting against his elbow, the one with a deep groove of a scar across its peak. The movement reels him in, carp sunk into a hook, and he steps into the cloud of chai and oolong that fills the shop with heady heat.

It’s crowded, as is every corner of this pocket of London, and even at the immediacy of his reaction it takes over half a minute to reach his target, who is innocuously perusing a box of Lady Grey.

Arthur looks at the house of card racks of neatly bound and colour coded displays.

“You’re not due in until tomorrow,” he says, barely more than a teapot steam murmur.

Eames puts back the Lady Grey at an incorrect angle to her sisters on the shelf, no doubt on purpose.

“You’re not the boss of me,” Eames replies, which isn’t strictly speaking true at this moment in time.

As point man, with no extractor or client yet present and accounted for, that’s exactly what Arthur is.

“How did you find me?” he asks, partly out of genuine curiosity, but mostly because he sees no reason to follow the rules of whichever game Eames wishes to engage in.

And in any case, the _why_ he would do so is perfectly obvious.

“Darling,” Eames tuts, one hand in the pocket of his exceedingly well fitted leather jacket while the other fondles a detailed tea strainer indelicately. “A magician never reveals his secrets.”

Arthur is definitely not in the mood for this game.

Unfortunately, he’s now stuck in what feels like the busiest tea shop in all of England, staring at a downright pornographic review of a rooibos-raspberry blend, and has no discernible way around the iron blockade of Eames’ shoulders.

Eames nudges at another tea with blunt knuckles, Turkish apple in a cylinder of ornate decorations.

“What did you think lying to me would achieve?” he asks in a voice as soft as the leafy aroma in the air.

“I never lied,” Arthur retorts sharply, picking up a thin tray of candied ginger and turning it over between his hands.

Eames laughs, stepping closer; close enough for Arthur to smell the newness of the leather he’s wrapped in, the citrus of his cologne and the trace remnants of the cigarette he smoked earlier.

Just the one, Arthur thinks, over an hour ago by now. An afterthought of a scent left in the folds of his coat.

He isn’t looking at Arthur, as far as he can tell.

Then again, Arthur’s not quite looking either. He can feel Eames’ porcupine edges bristling.

“Anything to get the job done, hmm?” Eames asks, and Arthur doesn’t have to be looking to know that smile. A snake eyes, con man’s smile.

He wants to protest the accusation; it sits in his chest, a well-placed punch.

“How did you find me?” he asks again, instead of acknowledging the glancing blow of Eames’ words.

For a moment, Eames leans into him close, so close his stubble might scratch Arthur’s face if he were to turn his head. When he pulls back, he’s got a tin of chai in one hand and the dressed-up box of Lady Grey in the other.

Arthur holds his breath, resilient against the smell of him, and the brief wall of a body too close to his own in a public place.

“You’re in my city now, Arthur,” Eames says without irony, and without a hint of the voice behind the texts still sitting in Arthur’s phone from last night. “Next time you bring me into a job under a false pretence, try not to choose a place so wholly to your disadvantage.”

It’s not a false pretence, and Arthur doesn’t like the implication. He told Eames no lie to get him here.

“You could leave,” Arthur says, mouth too dry, skin too hot.

He catches Eames’ eye, properly. There’s not so much as a suggestion of betrayal in the cool, lively look of him.

He’s good at what he does, after all.

“Could I, now, _boss?”_ Eames asks, and his mouth twitches.

He slips between two eager camera clickers before Arthur can reply. Whether he pays for the tea or not, Arthur doesn’t know, because Arthur doesn’t turn around until he’s read the information on the backs of no fewer than six different boxes of tea.

There are no answers to be found in the drying process of green tea, of course, although he does buy a box of chamomile.

When he walks back out, he gives his surrounding a cursory sweep to no avail.

He doesn’t need to hide his own pang of disappointment; there’s only himself and a few hundred strangers to witness it.

.

.

The last time Arthur was in London with Eames, they broke into the head of a murderer and helped solve a twenty-seven-year-old crime.

The time before that, Eames got in a fight with four strangers and Arthur drove him to an A&E in painful, wretched silence.

The time before that, Eames put a loaded gun to Arthur’s head and very, very nearly pulled the trigger.

.

.


	7. rionnag iv.

.

.

**rionnag iv.**

**( then)**

.

.

Arthur goes downstairs for dinner, because he’s hungry and because he’s curious and because he’s definitely not a coward.

He’s not sure whose clothes he’s wearing, and he tries not to think about it too much. They’re soft, gentle on the worst of his abrasions, and it shouldn’t matter at all.

They’re in the kitchen, still; their voices gently bumping against one another in the drift of sound. It’s a warm house, this one. A home, inescapably so. These are walls built to be lived in, _bought_ to be lived in.

It’s disorienting, and Arthur stops briefly in the doorway to the kitchen, taking in the dusty spice of the air, and the relaxed postures of the two men sitting opposite each other at the table.

“Arthur,” James says cheerfully, waving him over and pulling a seat out. “Come sit, do you want some tea? Coffee? Juice?”

He’s wearing a look of patient friendliness, and Arthur’s not sure if James is acting like this because he’s injured, or if he’s just like this all the time, but he hates it, he hates it in his bullet-bruised bones.

“Coffee, thanks,” he says with a half-cocked smile.

James nods, looking oddly uneasy as he gestures Arthur to his seat and makes for the kettle.

“You know, it’s not –” he begins.

 _“James,”_ Eames interrupts in a slow voice, like strike one on the grid, and he gives the man a chiding look that James blushes at. “It’s rude to offer a man coffee and then deny him it.”

“I wasn’t going to,” James splutters with a dimpled grin. He offers Arthur an apologetic look. “I was just going to offer our guest some decaf.”

He gives Arthur another look, then, one that he can’t decipher, and before Arthur can regain control of his Tramadol tongue he snipes back,

“That’s not coffee.”

Eames snorts from across the table, and James flashes his teeth in a despairing grimace.

“Not another one,” he mutters, shaking his head as he fills the kettle and starts rummaging for mugs in a cupboard.

“Arthur,” Eames sighs gratefully. “You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for someone other than myself to correct him.”

Arthur shrugs one shoulder uncomfortably and looks at the cards in Eames’ hand.

“What are you playing?” he asks, eyeing the hand James has placed face down on the table.

“Go fish,” Eames replies with a glower that’s inappropriately serious for the situation.

“Oh my _God,”_ Arthur cries in despair, much louder than he’s dared speak all day. “You’re not just _married._ You’re a _married person._ You do _married people_ things.”

Eames ducks his head with his lips pursed, even as James bursts out laughing. It’s that deep, filthy laugh from before, at odds with his halo of curls and cornflower blue eyes.

Arthur feels himself sink a little easier into his chair, and maybe it’s the drugs or maybe it’s the look of embarrassment flashing across Eames’ face, but he feels abruptly much more at ease.

He turns to watch James making up a cafetière of coffee, dropping a teabag into a third mug and filling it.

“So, Arthur,” he says as he pours, that tremulous laughter still buried in his voice. “What brings you to sunny Scotland?”

“Other than the weather, you mean?” Arthur replies, glancing at the window.

The sky is close to dark already, it’s been hours since Eames pushed him up the stairs with easy shepherding. There are splatters of rain glittering over the glass, a faint pattering of sound from outside.

He accepts the cup of coffee he’s offered, curling his good hand around it, letting it burn just a little too deep into his palm.

“Naturally,” James agrees, sliding Eames’ mug across the table and keeping the tea for himself.

Arthur hesitates.

His eyes find Eames’, and the darting look he divides between the two men is full of the discomfited trouble itching under his bandages. He’s not sure what to say. He’s not even sure what he _can_ say.

Eames, noticing his dilemma, nods his chin towards his cup.

“He already knows everything,” he says, sipping his coffee and flicking at the corner of his playing cards with his thumb.

Arthur finds this hard to believe.

Dreamshare takes all types, and God knows Arthur’s in no position to judge books by their covers, not when he got asked for his ID buying a neat whiskey in a bar in California three months ago.

Nevertheless, Arthur’s not entirely convinced that _James_ knows _everything._

Luckily for Arthur, he’s crunched down on some quite potent drugs, which goes some way to excusing the way he drops his unhurt elbow with a heavy _thunk_ on the table and says,

“Does he know about the time you got so drunk when you were tailing that musician that you broke into the wrong hotel room and got arrested?”

He’s not sure if James’ responding laugh means yes or not. Arthur grins, pleased as he presses his lips to the scalding rim of his mug.

Eames is also hiding halfway behind his coffee.

“Thanks for that,” he murmurs.

James scoops up the lake of playing cards from the table, slowly shuffling them into a deck. He spares a glance for Eames, but his attention is firmly fixed on Arthur. There’s careful patience in his eyes and for the first time Arthur notices the grassy flecks in the sky of his irises; an unidentified well of understanding.

Arthur doesn’t shy from it. He stares back, defended only by the curling steam of his coffee and his medicinal wall of the tramadol’s sluggishness.

“Well, Arthur,” James says lightly. “Let’s start with who tried to kill you, and why are they emailing my husband?”

The coffee and drugs, it turns out, are a brittle defence against that uncompromising, patient gaze.

For a moment, Arthur is thrown by it.

Then he remembers Eames opening the red door, smirking at his sweater.

_Does this have anything about the job offer you didn’t send me?_

He would like nothing more than to point out that as of yet, there’s no evidence these two incidents are linked.

It seems pretty damn unlikely they aren’t though.

James takes a sip of his tea, his stare unwavering, and for a swift dance of a moment, he is something more than a barefooted, bespectacled civilian.

“Please don’t insult my intelligence by pretending they’re not connected. I’m trusting you not to have inadvertently led murderous criminals to my doorstep.”

Arthur opens his mouth, a sullen, rushing self-defence scraping over his tongue.

Luckily for Arthur, and perhaps all present, Eames cuts in with his familiar, sly forger’s voice,

“You mean other than the one who already lives here?”

James is less than impressed. He drops the shuffled cards into a neat pile in the middle of the table, where they sit tauntingly, some rudely innocuous symbol of their interrupted game.

Behind them, a timer on the oven goes off.

Eames, perhaps sensing a misstep or perhaps unprepared to risk one, gets up.

In the brief and pitiless silence, Arthur sees again that lean, mistrusting predator disguised beneath knitted wool and gold curls. James sips his tea.

The oven is loud; Arthur feels a wall of heat hit him when Eames opens it, pulling out a tray of deliciously ginger _something._ His traitorous stomach grumbles greedily. James’ lips quirk upwards.

“Do the rice, will you?” he asks, before returning his full attention to his guest, promptly ignoring Eames’ indignant spluttering. “Were you on a job?”

Arthur nods. His nose and cheeks are feeling fuzzy. He hopes to God it’s just the painkillers.

“Did any of your team make it?”

When Arthur fails to respond as the fuzz of numbness creeps up to his eyelids, James reaches out and puts a hand over his forearm. His fingers are calloused and incredibly warm.

“Arthur?”

Arthur shakes his head. For the first time since he bolted from the warehouse in Florida, he feels a rush of sickly, burning guilt slip like oil through his organs.

He looks down at his coffee, at the hand on his arm. The sudden, unwelcome urge to cry stiffens the clamp of his jaw, his cheekbones are abruptly too big for his face. His eyes are hot and dry.

“When?”

Out of sight, he can hear Eames finishing the pot of rice, doing it far more loudly than the task warrants. The clatter of noise is grounding, weights his feet to the floor and his legs to the seat. James’ grip on his arm tightens, just enough to tug his attention upwards.

“When did it happen?” he asks again.

Arthur tries to think. The days are little more than cloudy, pastel shades of exhaustion.

“Eight days ago,” he says. He doesn’t think he’s lying.

James doesn’t seem to think so either.

He gives a small nod of understanding; glances to the side, probably to exchange another meaningful, churning look with Eames. Arthur sinks lower into his seat, feeling the weight of their attentive energies, that dreamcatcher magic.

“The email arrived six days ago,” James says thoughtfully. “They maybe thought you were dead by then.”

Arthur shrugs unthinkingly, the movement jarring down to his injured elbow and he winces loudly. Even through the numb ebbing its way into his bloodstream, he can feel nerve endings protesting his negligence.

“Seems careless of them to assume,” Eames comments as he plates up heaped spoonfuls of wild rice.

James stands, too, and there’s the rustling of cutlery drawers and water running.

“Let’s eat,” he says, with an air of brushing cobwebs from corners, blowing dust from unseen shelves. “There’s nothing to be done right now. We can talk about this in the morning.”

The rhythm of the movements behind Arthur is inviting, a peculiar and particular melody of safety that he’s unaccustomed to. Despite enjoying a burgeoning career for some years now in the art of stealing secrets right out of people’s heads, he feels uncomfortably privy to a secret he had not expected to stumble upon.

He realises, then, as he is presented with a glass of water, a knife and a fork, a napkin, not to mention a generous plate of divinely cooked ginger chicken and rice, what had bothered him so much about Eames’ revelation.

It’s not so much the fact of his marriage, nor the secrecy with which he’s guarded it. It’s not the barefooted, bespectacled Scot who is undoubtedly as much of a mask-wearer as his husband, albeit a less literal one.

It’s the startling shattering of Arthur’s assumption that he and Eames were cut from the same, roughshod cloth.

That while they might work with amorally scavenging villains like Isabel Kasser and Roderick, with dazzle-hearted civilian dreamers like Dom and Mallorie Cobb, they were in fact neither breed. They were rather among the unprincipled nomads, who could be bought for a price or persuaded by valour, never assigning to themselves a singular loyalty.

Arthur had assumed, wrongly, that Eames was an unbelonging as he was, that this in some way made them equals.

Looking at Eames now, as he takes a seat at a dining room table in a house he owns, scruffily clad in evidence of a not-quite-recovered cold, eating food cooked by a man he has agreed to spend the rest of his life with, Arthur realises they are not the same. Not at all.

He shouldn't feel devasted. He shouldn't.

Arthur cuts up a tiny bite of the chicken, crispy-skin and tender meat, and eats it. It nips his tongue and heats him all the way to his bone marrow.

To his left, James says something coy about baked courgettes and to his right, Eames laughs.

He thinks it’s entirely possible he’s never felt lonelier in all his life.

.

.


	8. nyota iv.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lovely readers,
> 
> Thank you for sticking with me! And thanks for the lovely kudos and comments ^_^
> 
> Your friend,  
> LRCx

.

.

**nyota iv.**

**( now)**

.

.

Arthur’s first impression of Dominick Cobb was very much the same as the way he felt about the sea as a boy; his toes on the grassy verge near the house, overlooking the vast Atlantic.

Six years old, he’d stand overwhelmed by the terrible and wonderful urge to leap right off the cliff and into the dazzling ocean. And yet even then he understood, even without the beckoning of his mother to step back, that what lay before his feet was a force that would easily overpower him.

It has been some time since Dom Cobb inspired genuine awe in Arthur, not at all like the sea, the way it still holds his heartbeat in its grip.

He’s never forgotten his caution, though.

Cobb might be a professional civilian now who spends his days standing at the front of lecture theatres and watching cartoons with his children, but he’s as dangerous as he was the day they met. The ones with the biggest ideas often are.

He greets Arthur with a gentle, not altogether sincere smile when he arrives at the hotel, dressed for travel and looking warily at the concierge.

Surrounded by other guests in the lobby, it would be unwise of them to do more than shake hands warmly, so that’s exactly what they do.

“Good flight?” Arthur asks through a thin layer of disinterest, Dom’s warm hand briefly resting on his upper arm.

Dom makes a so-so tilt of his head and mouth.

“Should’ve taken the redeye and slept the whole way,” he says with likely genuine regret.

He’s all crumpled suit and shadows, his shoulders curving and his hair pulled from its pomade by restless fingers.

“Let’s get you a drink,” Arthur says as Dom’s luggage is swiftly shepherded away by two smartly uniformed men.

“If it’s anything other than coffee, I’m leaving you there and going to my room,” Dom retorts cheerfully, gesturing with a flat hand for Arthur to lead the way.

He does, weaving between tables and bystanders to a large set of open white doors.

“Gentlemen,” a tall woman greets them, brandishing her wine list like a weapon. “Will you be dining, or shall I take you through to the bar?”

Dom looks exhausted by the very prospect of answering. Arthur takes pity on him.

“We might eat,” he replies, clapping a hand on Dom’s shoulder and squeezing. “He’s on doctor’s orders for caffeine, though. We’ll start with a triple espresso and take it from there.”

“Very good, come with me,” the woman smirks, seating them at a corner table with menus to peruse at their leisure.

Dom drops into his chair like a deflated balloon, a little more of his jovial manner disappearing now they’re less easily observed without notice.

The server is prompt with their drinks, a generously sized espresso for Dom and a pot of tea that Arthur instantly regrets ordering. He pours it anyway, tar-brown and pungent.

“We’re on schedule, then?” Dom asks, only after sinking most of his coffee in one large gulp.

Arthur rotates his scalding cup in its saucer in lazy half-turns, reluctant to drink.

“Ahead,” he replies ruefully. “Our forger is already here.”

Dom’s eyebrows lift, some of the weight of his tiredness leaving him in his curiosity.

“That’s unlike him,” he says truthfully.

Despite what his overarching vowels and natural inclination to hate all things French suggests, Eames isn’t known for being founds in England’s borders any longer than absolutely necessary.

“We have office space near London Bridge,” Arthur says without comment. The last thing he wants to do right now is debate Eames’ habits with Dominick Cobb. “Shale regularly commutes from a country home in Kent and has an apartment in the city. We’ll be able to keep eyes on him as we need.”

Dom nods grimly, draining his cup in a second gulp. Though his eyes are brighter, his alertness does not do him any good. It’s a shaky wakefulness, chemical and weak, and it shows.

“We’ll meet tomorrow, early,” he says. “If Eames is already here, we may as well make the most of it. He can watch Shale’s movements, get started on knowing his routine.”

Arthur lets him plan aloud, his eyes on the menu and his ears on the dainty chatter of the mostly empty room. It's elegently decorated, none too heavy on the gilded mirrors, with an incredibly tall scoop of ceiling that magnetises all sound to its high beams. Adorning the walls are carefully chosen black and white photographs, as evenly spread as prize gallery choices. The one closest to them crisp greyscale, but he can still imagine the sky shine of Ol' Blue Eyes, his dapper charm grin spread wide.

Dom’s attention drifts rapidly from tomorrow’s plan to a more open-ended pondering of the case, his voice a grumble of sound.

“Shale’s been involved in Sen-Core for over ten years,” he says eventually, as he nudges his coffee glass back and forth between his palms. “Do we know how much contact he and Reika would have had?”

Arthur turns his head to the left, tightening his jaw around his answer.

 _Reika,_ how does he say her name so casually? Like he hasn't seen a photograph of her oesophagus torn outwards across the ground.

“Difficult to say,” he admits. “Shale’s spent over half his time in Japan for the past six years. They’d certainly have attended some of the same meetings, likely butted heads a few times. It was her job to protect Sen-Core’s primaries from foreign influence, it was Shale’s job to open up foreign trade. There would have been plenty cause for them to know of each other’s agendas but little cause for them to be in the same room very often.”

Dom glances down over the top of the menu Arthur’s holding, reading it upside down with more interest than he seems to realise. Arthur smirks, wondering what chance there is that if he orders food, Dom will eat it without noticing, too. It would hardly be the first time he's pulled that one.

“How are James and Phillipa?” he asks, not attempting to hide the effort of the distraction.

As a parent, Dominick Cobb has always been easily distracted, even before the death of his wife. He leaps gladly on the chance to sit up in his chair and say with bold pride,

“Great, they’re both great. Phillipa’s a firecracker, still. Wants to be an Olympic acrobat. James is making large plans for his career as a shark.”

Arthur snorts. He’s oddly glad James hasn’t given up his obsession yet;

Before Dom’s triumphant return, it had been Arthur’s great pleasure and honour-bound duty to watch all manner of inappropriately graphic shark documentaries with the man’s youngest during his brief, intermittent visits.

He’s still mostly convinced he shouldn’t have allowed James to watch the one with the great white shark and that poor dolphin that got left behind. As long as Dom doesn’t bring up any prevailing nightmares, however, Arthur thinks he’s probably in the clear.

“Far more sensible ambitions than their father,” he acknowledges.

Dom’s eyes are full of warm agreement as he nods.

“They’ll be expecting you to come back for Thanksgiving again after last year,” he reminds Arthur yet again.

“I’ll do my best.”

 _“Ha,”_ Dom retorts, finally picking up a menu of his own. “You’ll be there, or you’ll be facing the wrath of my eleven-year-old daughter. Not to mention my seven-year-old shark.”

Arthur hisses his laughter through his teeth, pushing his steeped teapot towards the edge of the table out of the way.

“I take it she’s inherited her mother’s outrage.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Dom retorts wisely.

It’s strange, and not yet shy of painful, to think two years ago Arthur wouldn’t have dared bring up Mal in conversation. It’s nice to feel able to talk about her with Dom again, if only in circular references. In the aching wake of Dom's exile, it had been all too easy for Arthur to forget his own bereavement, the loss of her hand between his shoulder blades as she stood behind him, watching him work and teasing him for his future spinal complaints.

Dom’s thoughts must fall somewhere close to Arthur’s, then, because the warmth in his eyes has creased at the edges when he looks up. Behind the superficial tiredness of travel, he looks good. He looks more like the man Arthur staggered out of a bar with at two in the morning on a Wednesday, shrieking hysterical accusations back and forth between bouts of laughter and the hiccough of aniseed.

Luckily, their server has spotted the menus in their hands and is as coolly efficient in catching them as her greeting had been.

“Gentlemen,” she says, coming to a sweeping stop at their table. “What can I get for you today?”

She takes their order with a bouncing nod of her head and a promise of fresh drinks. As he watches her walk away, he feels the buzz of his phone in his pocket.

He pulls it out, staring down at the text lighting up the screen.

_Tell him I’m not coming in before eleven. I have errands to run tomorrow._

Arthur frowns, glancing up at Dom and back down again.

He refrains, barely, from glancing over his shoulder, too. Eames isn’t an omniscient being, he reminds himself, nor is he the lord of espionage he thinks he is. He’s just very good at lucky guesses.

 _What errands?_ He asks instead.

There’s a pause of over a minute, during which time Dom’s stare burns a hole right through Arthur’s skull, into the swirling thoughts within.

 _Important ones._ Eames texts back.

It’s difficult to tell, sometimes, when Eames is goading Arthur to keep going or shutting down on him completely. Arthur is certain Eames doesn’t know which one he’s doing either, most of the time. The man’s a catastrophe of mixed intentions.

 _Do not rob a gallery in the next twelve hours,_ Arthur replies, just to make sure. _We don’t have time to fence a Rubens right now._

This time, the reply is almost instant.

_You know bloody well it wasn’t a Rubens._

Arthur slides his phone back into his pocket, satisfied at his own lucky guess and feeling less shackled to his chair.

“Eames won’t be meeting us early,” he says, to which Dom has only one reply.

“Of course he won’t. Well, as long as he can follow Shale home tomorrow, I suppose it doesn’t matter what time he gets in.”

Arthur rather thinks this lackadaisical view of Eames’ work ethic is coming less from any kind of natural leniency from Dom, and more the fact that given Dom hasn’t seen the forger since the Fischer Job, during which he incurred a fraction of genuine wrath from Eames over the sedative deception. It's clear Dom is feeling too keen to get back on the right foot with him to make a fuss.

Actually, come to think of it, Arthur’s more than certain he can sum up Eames’ important errands into one bullet point: Inconveniencing Dominick Cobb.

“I’m sure we’ll do just fine without smartass commentaries for the morning,” he replies, just in time for another server to bring them their drinks, tidying away Dom’s empty coffee and Arthur’s untouched tea without comment.

He doesn’t bother interpreting the look Dom gives him, electing instead to bring Dom up to speed on the background of Shale’s accounts at Sen-Core.

In his pocket, his phone buzzes again.

He ignores it, for the time being. He’ll ignore it for the rest of the day.

.

.


	9. rionnag v.

.

.

**rionnag v.**

**( then)**

.

.

When Arthur wakes up, he knows he has been asleep for longer than he’s managed in days.

His arm is stiff, the pain radiating from his elbow is momentarily blinding. Arthur lies on his back, breathing very slowly as he catalogues how deep the pain in his side goes. It’s a clean pain, at least. Sharp, not the syrupy pain of infection.

His mouth is fizzy soda dry and his eyelashes are crusted with sleep. When he turns his head to the right, he sees light bleeding around the edges of the curtains; to the left, a bedside cabinet, on which sits a glass of pale yellow juice and two tablets.

There’s a post-it note stuck under the pills that he plucks off and reads:

_Only take if you’re ready for food!_

It’s written in the same wide, disproportionately vowelled handwriting as the address of this very house in his notebook had been. However, he doubts Eames wrote this note.

Idly, he wonders if Eames actually has a natural calligraphy, or if he lost that to James along with his name.

It takes a while to pull himself up, out of the unreasonably soft mattress, by which time his head has stopped spinning.

He picks up one of the pills, pushing it as far back onto his tongue as his fumbling fingers can manage. The juice is strong, pinching lemon, and after a few timid sips he braves a larger gulp. The second pill goes down easier.

Briefly, Arthur considers making an effort to get dressed before going downstairs. He’d probably feel better equipped to deal with whatever he finds downstairs if he were wearing a suit.

Unfortunately, Arthur doesn’t have any suits with him, which leaves only the clothes left magnanimously on the chair in the corner for him, or pulling something out of his backpack.

Given the last item of clothing he’d taken out of that bag had ended up having a garish Mickey Mouse on it, Arthur decides he’ll risk his chances with going down as he is, sleepwear clad and rumpled. It’s not like he’s got much dignity to spare at this point.

The room he’s been placed in has all the hallmarks of an irregularly used, regularly forgotten spare bedroom. It’s not half as homely as the kitchen, nor as carefully decorated as the hallway and staircase; nor is it in any way as recently decorated as the bathroom.

The walls are a pleasant enough eggshell white, with long indigo curtains and two nicely placed pictures on the walls, a print of Van Gogh’s Almond Blossom and another of a less familiar cluster of women in peach dresses scattered along a water front.

Idly, Arthur reaches over to open the drawer of the bedside cabinet. It’s disappointingly void of clues. Just an unopened box of tissues, a copy of Harper Lee’s _To Kill A Mockingbird,_ three pencils and a cell phone charger.

He picks up the book, flicking through the pages, half-hoping something interesting will fall out.

There’s nothing, though, except for two scribbles in the top left corner of the cover.

The first in red ink, he can just about make out the words _Marion Gordon._ A black line has been scored through it, though, and underneath is the second seal of ownership, _James Gordon._

Arthur drops it back in the drawer, shutting it with an irritable scowl before getting up.

The house is silent at first, but as he reaches the stairs, he can hear voices. Halfway down, he realises it’s a radio playing.

There’s no concealing his approach. The stairs creak to their own melody, as do the floorboards in the hallway, so he walks easily, barefoot, at his own pace all the way to the kitchen.

Eames is sitting at the table, exactly as he was last night, this time with a plugged-in laptop in front of him.

He looks up as soon as Arthur reaches the doorway, immediately reaching over to turn down the radio to an indistinctive mumble.

“Coffee?” he asks. “I’ve been instructed to feed you.”

Arthur feels a delicate smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. He was right after all.

“I’ll take whatever’s going,” he says, shuffling his way into a chair opposite Eames just as the Englishman gets up, moving to the worktop to pull some slices of bread out of a box on the side.

It speaks volumes of the past twenty-four hours of Arthur’s life, that he isn’t at all alarmed by the sight of Eames sporting a fluffy navy dressing gown like it’s a normal thing for him to be wearing.

“You can have toast,” Eames says, in the overly rehearsed tone of one following strict orders. “Apparently, a fry-up might not agree with you.”

Arthur’s stomach seems to violently agree with this sentiment, and he lets out a strangled version of a hum in acknowledgement.

Eames snickers, rooting through a large fridge and pulling out an assortment of jams he has no business having on offer.

“Where’s James?” Arthur asks after a moment’s observation, to which Eames throws a funny, frowny look over his shoulder.

“He’s at work,” he replies, as if this should be obvious. “One of us has to earn an honest living.”

Arthur grins, reaching out with his good arm to take the mug Eames offers him, pouring the rest of the cafetière contents into it.

“What honest living would that be?”

For a moment, Eames’ glittering laughter is inscrutable.

“He’s at the National Gallery.”

Arthur’s confusion breaks into a bark of laughter, his face creasing with his amusement, and he shakes his head at them both and takes a gulp of coffee. It’s barely warm, nutty and sharp.

“That must come in handy,” he says.

Eames shrugs one shoulder, which seems like a futile attempt to appear enigmatic, rather than the air of a deviously lucky con-man whose secret to success has just been blown wide.

“More for him than me,” he replies, laying out a mix of butter, jam and honey for Arthur to choose from. “I still believe if I had his contacts, I’d be the one with a print in the Wellcome Collection, not him.”

Arthur snorts, pushing the empty cafetière towards Eames to encourage a refill, which he does with a suspicious glance at Arthur’s cup.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, sounding very apprehensive, which might be on behalf of Arthur’ own welfare, but could equally be that he doesn’t want to get into trouble for not being a watchful enough caretaker.

“Fine,” Arthur retorts, too sharply, and Eames annoyingly takes this as further confirmation of _Not Fine._ “I’ll be more fine after toast and coffee.”

Eames lets out a short huff, refilling the kettle and pulling the freshly popped toast out of the toaster.

“I don’t know if caffeine is as beneficial as you seem to think in your current state,” he says dubiously.

“Have you found anything about the shooter in Florida?” Arthur asks pointedly instead, indicating the laptop.

He doesn’t reach over and help himself to it, only because he’s fully aware of what he’d do to Eames if the man dared do the same to his belongings. In fact, he’s fully aware of what he _did_ do, the last time Eames tried to help himself to Arthur’s technology.

Eames, who is still playing domestic dollhouse with the coffee, appears not to have heard him.

“Eames,” Arthur says, a little more impatiently, even as he picks up an open jar of honey and spoons a thick layer onto a slice of toast.

He can smell the cloying sweetness, almost flowery in his nose, and his mouth waters.

Eames stands with his body mostly turned away to the kettle, daylight splashing through the window over his features, his dark blue dressing gown rolled up at the sleeves and tied loosely at the waist. Even from this angle, his frown is obvious.

The kettle hisses loudly, the radio chatter is no louder than the birds outside, barely audible.

A cold, terrible feeling floods through Arthur, then. In the space left by Eames’ hesitation, like the friendly loop of James’ handwriting or the pile of post-its stuck to a cork board on the wall in front of Arthur, too far for him to read them, there is a truth he isn’t ready for.

“Eames,” he says a second time, quieter than the first. “Tell me.”

Eames’ shoulders drop ever so slightly, the tiniest of victories.

His fingers drum on the kettle lid, flicking it off before it reaches the boil.

“You were working with Holly Morrison, weren’t you?” he asks.

For a moment, Arthur’s breath is stolen, shrunk to nothingness in his lungs as he sees, vivid as a nightmare, Holly, bent over with her hands on her knees, laughing so raucously she’s given herself hiccups. Her blonde hair sticking to her sweaty face, her t-shirt soaked at her armpits and down her back.

In the next moment, the life sapped from her golden blue eyes, the streaks of blood on her throat; the perfectly round bullet hole in her cheek.

 _I’ve got a secret,_ she had told him only two days before, and she never said it out loud, but Arthur might live a thousand years and he’ll never forget the way she pressed a hand against her stomach. He feels the electric shock of grief catch momentarily in the back of his throat before he clears it with a cough.

“Yes,” he says, hoarse and unforgiving.

Eames nods, licks his lips, pours the water. Steeps the coffee and pushes the plunger. It’s all done with a rare, stoic kind of efficiency that Arthur isn’t used to, not from a man whose life motto has always been _Why walk, when you can saunter?_

When he looks at Arthur, there’s an unwelcome apology in the shape of his mouth, and Arthur wonders very briefly if Eames knew Holly.

“The email sent from your account,” Eames says instead of answering Arthur's undared question, an utterance of such dread it peels back the layers of Arthur’s fortitude, leaving him as vulnerable as he feels.

“Yes,” he repeats, a slower vowel.

Eames stands at the table, holding the French press with both hands like a shield, or perhaps an offering.

“For God’s sake, Eames, spit it out,” Arthur snarls in a flare of anxiety.

Eames flinches, and Arthur tries not to feel bad.

“It was for a job on the fourteenth.”

Arthur blinks, his brain momentarily fudging together the numbers, before his eyebrows lift up.

“That’s in four days.”

Eames nods.

“I took the job.”

“You _what?”_ Arthur shouts, louder than he means to, going so far as to flinch half out of his seat and wincing loudly at the stinging pain that runs through his side and hip at the movement.

Eames, the asshole, takes this moment to pour him more coffee. He looks contrite, though he doesn’t say as much, scooting back into his seat and topping up his own mug as he avoids Arthur’s eyes.

“Eames, please explain to me this sudden bout of insanity. What were you thinking?”

“I don’t think they wanted you dead.”

Arthur frowns. He refrains from pointing out that the three bullet wounds he’s currently sporting say otherwise, and instead takes a very large, aggressively torn bite of honeyed toast.

Too large a bite, as it turns out, because he immediately starts coughing up sticky crumbs.

Eames just about manages to suppress his laugh, but the instinct to do so is entirely obvious.

He waits with the most false display of politeness Arthur has ever seen, even going so far as to fetch him a glass of water from the sink, which is resolutely ignored in favour of more coffee. Eames snorts, leaving it near Arthur’s plate.

After slapping his chest twice, Arthur swallows down another choke and says,

“Explain.”

Eames does not remotely suit an expression of innocence. It sits too heavily on his features, at odds with the wickedness of his eyes and the natural glimmer of his liar’s charm. Not for the first time, Arthur is distinctly aware of Eames’ ability to make all manner of people fall in love with him.

Although, for the first time, there’s an undercurrent of nasty triple-meaning to that, now.

“They killed four other dreamers,” he says matter-of-factly, as far away from the splatter of Holly’s blood that had stained the doorway Arthur ran through as he could possibly be. “Whoever this man was, he was prepared. He knew what he was walking into and he executed his plan very efficiently.”

His choice of words is incredibly poor and undoubtedly done purposefully.

“You don’t think I could have gotten out without him letting me?” Arthur asks, even as he grinds his back teeth together.

Eames sighs very loudly, a soft sound that says more than his impassive expression.

“That’s not a slight against your abilities, Arthur,” he says with such ripe condescension, Arthur wants to pull him up on every time he’s accused Arthur of the same.

“So, he let me escape. Why?”

Another unhelpful shrug, followed by a nod at his plate. Eames doesn’t resume his explanation until Arthur has taken another, more reasonable sized bite of toast.

The honey is tacky over the roof of his mouth, aromatic and strong, softening the toast into gooey crumbs that melt over his tongue. Arthur does his best not to groan, only because he doesn’t want to give Eames the satisfaction.

“Assuming the shooter is the man who sent the email – or that he’s working with whoever did. They sabotaged your job, they killed your team, they drove you underground. They’re clever enough to break into at least one of your accounts, and they know you well enough to send out a job offer that sounds awfully legitimate. Either they know you personally, or they are very thorough with their research.

“Whichever it is, they know you’ll go to ground and that under normal circumstances, you won’t access any of your primary accounts for at least two weeks, to avoid being traced if you can help it. That gives them two weeks to play with your contacts, set up another job in your name.”

“And then what?” Arthur scoffs, and he’s about to make a truly outlandish joke when the words stick to the honey on his tongue, garbling out instead as a retching cough.

It’s not a funny joke at all. Even Eames’ grim nod has lost any trace of his earlier amusement.

For a moment, the idea hangs in the air between them with the scent of the coffee and the sunlight draping over them. The radio is humming a bass heavy beat, and very faintly, he can hear a clock ticking. Glancing up over Eames’ head, Arthur sees with some alarm that it’s gone midday.

Swallowing down the taste of the honey spoiled by Eames’ suspicions, Arthur clutches his coffee tighter, the warmth seeping into his palm little comfort amidst his turmoil.

Unable to voice his own horror, he says instead,

“The email sounded legit?”

Eames nods.

“But you knew it wasn’t.”

Eames’ eyes narrow, as if misreading Arthur’s confusion.

“I’m very good at what I do,” he says for the second time in twenty-four hours.

Arthur’s not intentionally stepping on Eames’ pride with his suggestions. Then again, there is rather a lot of it to try and avoid.

“Holy shit,” he says instead, slumping back in his chair, tracing his thumb up and down the handle of his coffee cup.

Eames quirks a solitary, sympathetic eyebrow.

“So, the question is, who did you piss off so royally they’re going to all this trouble to bring you down?”

The honest answer is, of course, _I have no idea._ The idea of saying those precise words to Eames, however, is so abhorrent that Arthur doesn’t so much as contemplate it.

“Professional rivalry?” he suggests, although it’s weak at best. Points in dreamshare are often as ruthless as they come, but to this excess? Arthur’s not so sure.

Eames, who has returned his attention to his laptop and is tapping away quite happily, makes a humming sound that implies he thinks much the same.

“Anyone follow you out of the military with a grudge to bear?”

He asks it very casually, frowning at whatever he’s just typed and backspacing it all in a series of rapid clicks.

Arthur feels a familiar curdling in his guts.

Outside, on the window ledge, a sparrow has hopped up, peering in nosily at the kitchen with a beady, dark eye.

“How do you know I was military?” he asks shrewdly.

Eames’ eyes dart up over his laptop for a brief moment, then back to Arthur’s toast with disapproval.

“I’ve seen you strip down an M24,” he retorts.

Arthur lets out a low, wavering chuckle.

“Could make me a contract killer.”

Eames’ mouth twitches around another of his languid smiles. He pauses in his typing, a flash of teeth and tongue before he replies,

“I’ve also seen you cuddle the ever-loving shit out of a springer spaniel puppy.”

Arthur does laugh then, properly, and with none too small a measure of wistful affection for the puppy in question, which had belonged to Sheila Darrow, a damn good chemist and an absolute sucker for rescue dogs.

“Contract killers can like animals, too,” he points out.

Eames gives him a look of such droll bafflement, Arthur almost blushes.

“Answer my question,” he says instead of whatever reply is lurking in his eyes.

The shrug Arthur offers him is feeble at best.

Outside, the sparrow is chirping.

“I was on the dreaming programme for over a year. I did one tour and then I left. All fine. Nothing terrible, nothing drastic. I just decided it wasn’t for me anymore.”

Eames doesn’t hide the slight surprise in his face at that, although Arthur doesn’t think it’s out of the question that he’s still playing a part. Perhaps he is surprised, or perhaps he already knows that and is only surprised Arthur would tell him the truth.

Just because Eames has considered himself above telling Arthur the truth about his life, doesn’t mean Arthur is going to respond in kind.

The thought has barely formed, cloudlike in his mind, when realisation at his own pettiness comes hurtling back down to earth along with Arthur’s embarrassment, and there’s no hiding the sudden blush in his cheeks.

He takes a lengthy sip of his coffee, prickly under Eames’ stare.

Before he can say anything more, Eames abruptly swings his laptop around, offering it to Arthur.

On the screen there is an open email chain.

Arthur reads it quickly, scanning and rescanning each sentence, combing every letter for a misplacement of meaning, some clue. There’s nothing. Much to his consternation, Eames’ responding email is suitably vague and teasing, as all his contact with Arthur is when he’s being difficult.

“You can’t go,” he says in an obvious, telling tone.

Eames’ affronted scowl isn’t surprising, but it is hellishly frustrating all the same.

“Of course I can,” he mutters. “How else do you propose we figure out what’s going on?”

Arthur lets out a deep, long sigh. His eyes drift past Eames’ shoulder, to the cork board covered in post-its and postcards and strips of paper.

He still can’t read them, but he can see the postcard bearing a brightly coloured picture of a clashing bull and matador. He stares at it, wondering idly if it’s one Eames picked up on a job; when he sent it, what’s written on the back.

Eames is glowering at him with hard, cold eyes.

“You came here for my help,” he says with dangerous resilience, a tone that brokers no argument.

Arthur offer him a half-smile, looking back at his face, at his fluffy dressing gown and the stripe of gold around his fourth finger.

“I didn’t know what I would be asking of you,” he says, and he tries not to make it sound patronising but in his effort, he fears he only sounds more vulnerable.

Eames’ eyes soften, yet his words are unknowingly harsh when he replies,

“It’s hardly more than you’ve ever asked before.”

Arthur grits his teeth, trying his best not to feel scalded.

“Putting aside the fact that _I didn’t know what I was asking then, either,_ ” he says, snippy and cut as tree vines. “This _is_ different, Eames. This isn’t a job. You’re not doing it for the money, or the challenge, or the, the thrill of it, whatever reason you normally do a job for.”

“No, I’m not,” Eames agrees, lemon sharp and bewildered. “I’m doing it to help a friend. I’m not sure why _that_ surprises you, Arthur, even if all this does.”

The way he flops his hand in a lazy circle around the room, gesturing to the cluttered kitchen with his left hand as he says _all this,_ does numerous, topsy-turvy things to Arthur’s insides.

He thinks it all too possible he’s actually managed to hurt Eames’ feelings, underestimating his willingness to help. To be completely honest, he hadn’t thought that was really possible.

Eames has always had a shameless infallibility when it comes down to the wire. He does what he wants, and that makes him simultaneously the best and worst backup in a job Arthur’s ever encountered. Really, is it so surprising that Eames would agree to help Arthur?

“You’re right,” he says, in a stilted, cold coffee tone. He fiddles with the last corner of his toast. “I guess I just – I mean.”

In an act of unexpected mercy, Eames doesn’t make him say it out loud.

“James is on board with the plan, you know,” he says. “If that’s what’s worrying you. This might come as a shock to you, dear, but he and I actually talk to each other about things.”

Arthur grins, trying to dampen his embarrassment and look only grateful instead.

He eats the last bit of toast, and generously doesn’t punch Eames in the face for the proud look he promptly offers him.

“Honestly, I think he’s a bit jealous he can’t come, too,” Eames continues, shutting his laptop and pushing it to one side. “He likes a good murder mystery.”

Even as he smiles, Arthur winces at the sting.

“Not funny,” he says, though he isn’t surprised when Eames isn’t in the least bit apologetic. “Ok. Ok, fine. Thank you. Yes. Ok.”

Eames’ amusement is intrusively apparent. He nods encouragingly, as if to a small child.

“Good,” he agrees. “How are you feeling now?”

The pain has somewhat subsided, and Arthur does feel a little more clear-headed, although he’ll happily give the coffee the credit for that one.

“Better,” he says truthfully. “I should shower.”

He says this with a great measure of both enthusiasm and reluctance. The idea of washing himself properly, scrubbing the grime of memories out of his scalp, is blissful. Nevertheless, the idea of washing himself properly, navigating his various stitches and pockmarked cuts with nippy soap, is dreadful.

Eames nods, and asks with a pointed leering smirk,

“Need some help?”

Arthur rolls his eyes, draining his coffee and pushing himself slowly to his feet.

“You, Mr Eames, are a married man.”

Eames throws his hands up at the ceiling, cracking his neck and chuckling.

“Alas, so I am,” he replies. “What about a threesome?”

This time, Arthur does laugh, shaking his head.

“Not on your life,” he says. “I’m telling your husband you offered, though.”

Eames’ smile, a radiant thing, really, is too infectious, so Arthur looks away, out to the window and the cherish blue sky.

“Got everything you need?” Eames asks, and it’s a genuine question that has twelve hundred answers to it, all of which would be true.

Arthur nods, placing his hand on his upper arm, just above his bad elbow, feeling for any swelling. There’s none, just a deep, unscratchable itch of pain that lingers under his skin and the potency of the drugs.

“Thanks, Eames,” he says.

“Anytime,” Eames replies, and perhaps oddest of all, is that Arthur actually believes him.

.

.


	10. nyota v.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends,
> 
> Your comments bring me a great deal of joy, even on sad days. Thank you :*
> 
> Yours truly and affectionately,  
> LRCx

.

.

**nyota v.**

**( now)**

.

.

Early morning on a Wednesday at London Bridge, as it turns out, is even more unpleasant than Arthur had anticipated.

The difficulty, he thinks, is that the Brits are so deeply ingrained to be as polite about their rudeness as possible. Where someone back home might well make their disdain perfectly clear for the way Arthur cuts in front of them across the street, skirting about the subway entrance, the London suit he does in fact inconvenience makes a truly irritating _chuff_ of sound that somehow lingers a lot longer than a yelling match might.

The street, bridge and surrounding area is positively crawling with commuters. Buses, taxis and foolhardy cars are stalling a mile in either direction, and it’s been a long time since Arthur saw quite such a bustling sea of grey-blue-grey. Weaving between idle cars, daring cyclists are risking the ire of pedestrians and drivers alike at unlikely speed.

There’s an inherent, disapproving misery to the way London commuters navigate their well-worn tracks. A distinctive resignation that _this is how it is_ that, in Arthur’s experience, is borne entirely from a very British way of being.

He takes a left off the high street, his head bowed in the same solemn worship of rush hour as everyone around him, quickly making his way through the curved labyrinth that leads to the rented office buildings stacked opposite a chic, overpriced cocktail and coffee bar.

The light cracking through the clouds above is bleak, the air thick and humid. He unlocks the building with a seven digit code, snapping the door shut behind himself as he proceeds to walk up four flights of stairs to a wide, open office space.

It’s quick, methodical work, getting a job space ready. There’s an easy, numbing routine to it. Clearing space, assigning work stations, resetting the hot water and making a fresh pot of coffee.

In a way, Arthur’s always felt he’s readying himself as much as the office, or warehouse, or suite, whatever they happen to be using.

Pouring himself a first cup of coffee, he leaves it on the corner of the desk he’s claimed for himself. There are no conveniently displaced deck chairs for him to make use of, but a raid of a few doors down the corridor reveals at least some properly cushioned chairs that will have to suffice when they go under to run tests.

Out of the north facing window, he can see through an exposed gap between buildings a slit of greyish Thames, flicking in crests and breaks out towards the estuary, broken up by occasional boats that churn up the surface with thick foam.

He watches the irregular pattern of the waves as the sun breaks through the clouds in rosy shades of amber and the radiators gradually start to warm up, breaking the sweat of the windows.

It must be almost ten minutes before he hears the snickering of footsteps on carpet through the propped open door, the jolt of a door swinging shut too fast.

When he appears in the doorway, Dom looks undoubtedly tired, but significantly less so than he had done yesterday afternoon. He’s wearing a half suit that would have blended quite seamlessly into the crowds of the station, and he slings his coat on the rack near the door with a loose ease that speaks volumes.

“Good space,” he says, making eyes at the coffee pot and gravitating towards it like a feeble moth. “Morning, Arthur. Thanks.”

He toasts Arthur with a raise of his coffee cup before he sips, and it occurs to Arthur that this may well be quite a different Cobb to the one he got used to working with during the man’s exile from home.

In fact, perhaps, not different at all, but simply a lot closer to the man Arthur met in lecture hall at Seattle University almost ten years ago.

Before Arthur can conjure the obligation to reply in any way, they are interrupted by the sound of a second approach.

Ariadne is equally tailored to the office crowd, another pencil skirt suit and delicate kitty heels.

The suit she can’t do much about, but the heels she kicks off the moment she’s in the room, grinning wryly at Arthur with a large portfolio in one hand and a re-useable coffee cup in the other. Her eyes glitter with a dare to comment as she takes a sip from it.

“Good morning, Miss Lief,” he says with a tilt of his head.

“Morning,” she says, spritely and amused.

She’s kicks her abandoned shoes all the way under the biggest of the desk spreads, where she slaps her portfolio down and immediately hops up to sit on the edge, her cup cradled in both hands.

“Company of three, today?” she asks, smiling cheerily enough at Cobb that he probably doesn’t notice the scrutiny in her gaze.

Arthur, catching sight of the coffee he put down and promptly forgot about, goes to pick it up as he replies.

“Yusuf’s flight gets in tonight. Eames is – around. He’ll be in later.”

Unlike Cobb, Ariadne clearly has no reason to be suspicious of Eames having other business in London, ad she accepts the information with a simple nod of understanding. Arthur tries not to reveal his gratitude, hiding behind another sip of coffee.

“So, Zachary Shale,” Ariadne says without any desire for polite foreplay. “We’re presuming guilty until proven innocent.”

Arthur’s never questioned why he likes working with her.

Inexplicably, a knot of tension loosens ever so slightly from around the top notches of his spine.

All morning, he hasn’t been able to shake the feeling of curdling paranoia that began stirring in his chest as he left his hotel. This whole job at hand, so singularly unpleasant and at such personal cost.

Whatever they find once they get inside Zach Shale’s head, it won’t bring Saito’s wife back from the dead; will only confirm the magnitude of the betrayal from inside Sen-Core’s most senior directorship.

According to Saito, there is no question of Shale’s guilt, only the full extent of it his involvement.

There’s something in the displeased, determined quality of Ariadne’s voice, a doubt, the kind of trouble Arthur seems to have spent his life avoiding, only to walk right into with his eyes wide open.

“What do you think?” he asks, eyebrows high and mouth curved around it like a psalm.

Ariadne gives a lilting flick of one shoulder. She looks at the board, eyes scanning quickly. She swings in her chair, just enough traction to pull the wheels over the carpet grip.

“I think Saito’s one of the most cautious men I’ve ever met,” she says.

Arthur nods, and it’s the furthest gesture possible for a platitude. There’s recklessness in Saito, enough to engage in dreamshare; to endorse it, to live it himself.

And yet, that careful look he’d given Arthur in the chopper that lifted them up off that roof, back when inceptions were things of impossibility, and freedom a thing of Cobb’s furthest dreams, it stuck with him. He remembers that look, and yes, reckless and determined, but ever so cautious all the same.

“Let’s get to work,” Cobb says, and Ariadne gives up one of those looks herself.

 _My eyes are open,_ her look says. _I’m listening, too._

.

.

There’s a café on a corner of a long, cobbled street.

A hanging orange sign left loose in the wind, trapped between stone giants.

Arthur knows it by the tang of gouda cheese, the nip of the salsa in little emerald ramekins and the woodsy smell of the open fire near the stairs.

He knows it by the corner table, tall ferns and short chairs.

.

.

There is nothing cautious about Zachary Shale.

Zachary Shale is a broad man, with speckles of grey in his nut brown hair and heavy eyebrows that give an appearance of frowning almost all of the time. He walks pigeon-toed, and he keeps his phone in his left breast pocket.

On an unusual and typical Wednesday, he meets with an ex-client at a high stool and glossy tap bar.

He laughs over the bubbles of lager in his glass, the sound grating through Arthur where he sits in a close by booth with creaky new vinyl covers and a vintage absinthe poster framed on the wall above the table.

In front of him, he’s got his laptop open as he plays with some sheets and figures reserved from an old job. He’s been tapping in new inputs for almost an hour, his neck stooped to match the disgruntled bad spine of a middle manager resentful of his workload.

He nurses a bottle of pale ale as he types, wanting nothing more than to sink several vodkas and disappear to his hotel room.

Behind him, Shale is regaling his friend with long, boastful tales of his overseas adventures, and the pretty skirt who almost made him miss his flight home last month.

He reminds Arthur of Major Liman from basic training.

There had been an air about Liman, like a flatline that the doctors forgot to call. Liman had reached the limit of his military worth early, and he’d hit that wall hard as a concussion. It left him with a bully’s ego and a strange kind of jealousy that all the new recruits under his rule could rarely fathom.

It was obvious, how much Liman hated that Arthur could look him in the eye without flinching.

Shale has that self-same aura of a man stuck in his gears. His loudness is distracting and his coarseness is a well put together front for the deep dissatisfaction of his own career plateau.

There’s very little more dangerous than a frustrated man whose privileges are all but spent. Arthur’s seen it a thousand times.

But murder? It’s such a large leap.

If Saito had accused Shale of skimming off accounts, or selling secrets on the sly, Arthur wouldn’t hesitate to concur. Shale has revenge cheat written all over his three piece; his cologne is probably called _Opportunist._

As it stands, Arthur’s not entirely convinced Shale would even know how to go about contacting a hired gun, let alone having the guts to see it through.

As he continues to methodically clean up the spreadsheets in front of him, running each calculation individually in his head first just to drag it out further, the door to the bar opens and in walks none other than their very own, excessively delayed forger.

Eames is dressed in a slightly creased brown suit, looking precisely like a man who’s been sitting in front of his computer for two hours too long and has escaped the monotony of the office to seek the aid of his old friend Jack.

He’d conveniently not shown up at the office before Arthur had decided to make the most of Shale’s short schedule and follow him out into town, much to Ariadne’s amusement and Cobb’s disgruntlement.

Of course, Arthur had known when exactly Eames got to the office, because he’d promptly received an email from an account bearing the name _jacksonjacks73@yahoo.com _that included the headline **You didn’t tell me he’d graduated to fully fledged WANKER**.

Inside said email had been a small gif of a cat falling off a window ledge and a link to a video entitled _10 things you never knew about the Ancient Egyptians_.

Arthur’s not watched it yet, but he has no doubt it will be obscene and wildly inaccurate.

Now, Arthur watches from the corner of his eye as Eames orders at the other side of the bar from Shale, pays for his whiskey and leaves two coins on the bar top as he retreats to a poseur table with a single tall stool to perch on.

After a moment’s deliberation, Arthur pulls out his phone and sends a text.

_Don’t you people have a law against wearing brown in the city?_

From this angle, he can see Eames fish his cell phone out of his pocket, but not his face when he reads it.

There’s a pause, before Eames put the phone back without replying.

There’s absolutely no discernible reason for the obvious slight other than to goad Arthur, who is perfectly capable of not rising to such deliberate bait. Nevertheless, capable as he is, sometimes Arthur is more than willing to bite anyway.

After a brief internet search, he sends a second text.

This time, when Eames takes out his phone to look at the link Arthur has sent him to an instructional video on trepanning, he turns his head to the side to read the specials board above the bar.

In side profile, Arthur can see his smirk curling into his otherwise blank expression.

He still doesn’t reply, but he does drain his drink swiftly and return to the bar to order the most expensive vodka on the list, which can only be on purpose.

Eames takes this back to the same table, pulls a small notebook out of his pocket and spends the next fifteen minutes jotting down notes, occasionally drifting to his phone, where he keeps, Arthur can see when he tilts it just so, an open calculator app.

Soon enough, while Shale is boasting of his latest run-in with some _cockwit accounts prick_ to his drinking partner, Arthur’s phone lights up with a new text.

_There’s a rumour lobotomies are making a comeback. T/F?_

Arthur doesn’t hide his grin, dropping his phone back down without responding.

As he lazily trawls through another spreadsheet, changing the colour scheme out of sheer boredom, he listens to Shale debate ordering another round before heading off.

For one dreadful moment, Arthur fears he’s going to have to sit through another twenty minutes of overly personal details of Shale’s adultery. However, some higher being must think he’s endured enough for one day, because Shale decides against another pint.

He swings his jacket over his shoulders, bids the bartender thanks with the wave of a measly five-pound note, and follows his friend back out into the miserably grey afternoon.

Eames follows, slinking out unobtrusively less than a minute later as he pulls out a packet of cigarettes and tips his invisible hat to the bartender.

He doesn’t look at Arthur, but Arthur feels his attention like stones in his pockets all the same.

As soon as the door has swung shut on the exiting parties, Arthur buys a double measure of vodka from the bar, sinks it, buys another and takes it back to his laptop.

Half an hour later, his phone lights up again.

_I’m not a fan of tradition_

Arthur doesn’t have a response to that that isn’t cruel or weak.

He sends a cat gif instead, and pretends not to imagine Eames’ laughter glittering in his ears.

.

.


	11. rionnag vi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends,
> 
> I feel to need to press this issue. I realised only belatedly I've given Eames a name very similar to Tom Hardy's character in Dunkirk. This is an accident! I didn't actually know the Dunkirk character's name until quite recently, and I wanted to change it in this story when I noticed, but nothing else seemed to fit because I'd already decided his name in my head.
> 
> Basically, no, I'm not making obscure cross-references here, nor is it a hint of some kind. I'm just a bit dumb and too stubborn to go back on a decision.
> 
> Thank you so much for sticking with me, you really are all the absolute best.
> 
> Yours,  
> LRCx

.

.

**rionnag vi.**

**( then)**

.

.

It’s been a while since Arthur stayed in a house that doesn’t belong to anybody other than a family member of his own. Of course, technically he does own the flat in New York, and the one in Seattle might be bought under his brother’s name, but it’s been a while since anyone other than Arthur made use of it. They don't  _feel_ like his own, though.

The trouble with being in somebody’s house, of course, instead of a hotel or a regularly recycled apartment, is that it’s as far removed from neutral territory as it’s possible to be.

Arthur is, whether he means to be or not, an alien presence, here in this paint crack, floorboard terrace house in Edinburgh.

He tries very hard not to be himself on the first day.

He leaves Eames in the kitchen in the early afternoon, has an awkward, bandage-avoiding shower as best he can, and gets dressed in the plainly decorated guest room.

He goes back downstairs, passing the closed doors on the landing without so much as peeping into them, wearing borrowed clothes and smelling of borrowed shower gel and doped up on borrowed painkillers and he pretends to be entirely at ease with the way Eames shoves a jasmine tea at him and tells him to remain seated or else.

And while he’s there in the kitchen, he doesn’t ask about the books stacked haphazardly between jars of lime pickle and whole seed mustard, or the postcards on the cork board, or the photograph of two little girls wearing matching Christmas sweaters that’s pinned to the fridge.

No, they don’t talk about any of those things.

Eames, wearing a loose sports shirt and dark jeans with another pair of bright socks tucked over the hems, offers up of his own volition a plethora of information about the mystery job he’s accepted, the flights he’s booked to get to Sarajevo, the apparent client and his petty financial rivalry with another law firm.

It’s exactly the same, in many ways, as how they’ve approached every other job that they’ve worked together over the past three years. Except, of course, for the way Eames occasionally potters around the kitchen with muscle-memory ease, or frowns at the empty biscuit tin like he knows it shouldn’t be empty, or even once answering the landline phone when it rings with an absent-minded,

_“Ferrier. Oh, Dee, hi. No, not today. Work. Yes, I know, he’s an absolute tool. Yes, he is. Of course I can, he’s my husband. Yeah, and don’t think I don’t know whose idea that was. Oh, I know. Chance’ll be a fine thing. I’ll be away by Saturday. I know, I’ll make it up to you. Yes. I’ll tell him. Yes. Yes. Of course. Alright, maybe. I’ll get him to call you. I know. Give Benj a kiss for me. Bye, love.”_

While Eames stands in the hallway, making no attempt to conceal his conversation from prying ears, Arthur stares at the postcard on the corkboard he’d first seen that morning. The one with the stomping bull and the swirling toreador.

It’s quite faded, he realises, and worn at the corners, as if it’s been stuck and taken down and re-stuck in different places over the years. As if it’s precious enough to follow wherever the house’s inhabitants might go.

Arthur's trying very hard not to be himself.

So, when Eames comes back to the kitchen, he doesn’t ask who Dee is, or Benj. He doesn't ask what’s happening on Saturday, or who sent the postcard on the wall, or who the girls in the photograph on the refridgerator are.

It’s unnerving, the brazen manner of Eames here, easy to smile and slow to frown. He makes no attempt to conceal the vulnerability of his contentment, and it exposes like a nerve ending a measure of trust that Arthur doesn’t know what to do with, is unused to being afforded.

The afternoon passes in a haze, leisurely and fidgety. Tea, emails, toast, itineraries.

The clock rolls over, the sun peeps in and out of sight, and it’s only once the time slips quietly past business hours that Arthur realises he’s distracted, keeping an ear on the front door, waiting.

Is this what it amounts to, domesticity? The anticipation of routine, made all the more unnerving here, where it is an expectation that does not belong to Arthur?

Eames, perfectly at ease, shows no sign of noticing Arthur’s agitation. It’s difficult to tell whether that’s him being rude or polite.

He smirks at Arthur, gesturing him back to the living room where they’ve made their base of operations for the day, just to get away from the kitchen.

It’s as cluttered at the kitchen, and somehow smells just as strongly of herbs, too. The walls were probably sheer white, once; now they’re adorned with the tattoos of pen and paint and chalk.

It’s half a studio, and Arthur tries not to guess which etchings belong to which artist.

Because he’s not being himself.

Some of his curiosity must reveal itself, though, because Eames flicks a lazy hand at the nearest mural and says,

“James doesn’t like drawing people.”

It’s easy, then, to track their patterns across the walls of the living room.

Faces peer out from half scrambled swirls, forests of charcoal and a sea of oils that’s decorated with vivid shoals of scaly fish. There's an entire series of one girl, growing from toddler to old age, etched out in faded pencil marks that have been shaded in with pastels. There's an angry looking spider devouring a fly in a knotted web, a larger-than-life sunflower growing up the furthest wall, all the way to the ceiling.

Eames sits on a deflated, cushionless armchair, and Arthur perches on the sofa opposite.

“What have you told the fake me?” he asks, his eyes lingering on a smudgy charcoal shape on the wall near Eames’ feet.

It takes a moment for him to realise it’s an outline of two copulating rabbits, and he has to bite the side of his tongue to prevent a startled laugh from escaping. Eames, thankfully, doesn’t seem to notice.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

Arthur flaps his hand at the pile of papers on the small footstool between them, the topmost of which has his flight information.

“Your arrival, everything.”

Eames cocks his head, a bewildered robin in a breeze.

“The truth,” he says, like Arthur’s just asked him the colour of the sky.

Arthur manages to garble out several new vowel sounds before finding his way to a more coherent, _“What?”_

Eames scratches his jaw, doing a poor imitation of innocence.

“He’ll get suspicious if I don’t show up when I say I will.”

“And you’ll get _dead_ if you do!”

Eames rolls his very dramatically, sighing in a loud descant at Arthur’s lack of faith in his invincibility.

“Arthur, he’s not going to shoot me at the Arrivals Gate of Sarajevo International.”

Perhaps not. Funnily enough, Arthur is less than comforted by this all the same.

“You’re insufferable,” he splutters, when nothing more prudent comes to mind.

Eames raises his brow, not exactly disagreeing, nor looking particularly offended by the accusation. It’s not the first time he’s been called that by Arthur, nor he imagines by others, either.

Before Eames can offer up any further empty reassurances, however, there’s the rattle of a key in a lock and the sound of the front door opening from down the hall.

 _“Marco!”_ James’ coarse tenor voice shouts, to which Eames, still looking peach fuzz blameless in his armchair, promptly shouts back,

“Never reached China!”

There’s a stutter of a chuckle.

A moment later, James appears in the doorway, wearing a brightly patterned shirt and tan trousers. His hair is finger creased, and he pushes his glasses up his nose with the mid-joint of his thumb.

“You’re a fucking cynic, Eames Ferrier,” James says with a low laugh as he enters the room, stooping to drop a kiss on Eames’ smirk before throwing an envelope in his lap. “How are you feeling, Arthur?”

Arthur stalls very briefly under his scrutiny, before returning his smile.

He manages to get out a _Good, thanks_ as James sinks like a drooping cat onto the floor in front of the disused fireplace, before Eames lets out a pointed howl at the open envelope, from which he’s pulled two rectangular pieces of embossed card.

“You’re a monster,” he snarls at his husband, stuffing the cards back into their envelope and tossing it hard at James.

Arthur tries to catch a glimpse of whatever’s written on the front, but James just leaves it where it lands face down on the floor.

He turns his large, glittering sea eyes onto Arthur, leaning back on his hands, so that his shoulders hunch up to his ears. It’s only when he’s finally still that Arthur notices he’s got a nick of ink smeared close to his left ear, just above the line of his scruff.

“Arthur,” he says, jovial and charming, as smug as the cat he’s impersonating. “Will you do me the honour of being my date to an exhibition opening?”

Arthur, bemused, glances at Eames, who has the heels of his hands pressed into his eye sockets as he says _“Shut up!”_ very loudly.

He doesn’t sound angry, per say, but it’s not entirely teasing.

James, mirthful, magnetic, just chuckles.

“You’re the one who decided he’d rather be in Bosnia and Herzegovina getting shot at.”

Well, Arthur thinks to himself. That answers that one.

James is still looking at him, and it’s almost intimidating, that attentive, expectant stare, made all the worse when Eames stops hiding behind his wrists to look at him, too.

“You’ll probably have to talk to people about Tracey Emin and Jeff Koons,” he says sulkily. “You’ll hate it. You’ll hate everyone.”

Arthur’s pretty sure he will. He can’t imagine a scenario in which he’s trapped in a room with contemporary artists discussing their philosophical predispositions that’s anything other than hellish.

And yet, the morose look on Eames’ face is such a temptation.

“I know her,” he says with a thick layer of enthusiasm. “She did that one, _My Couch_ , right?”

“You –” Eames snaps before he can keep from biting down hard on the bait when he’s offered it.

James’ delight is loud. He throws his head back as he laughs, and Eames gets to his feet with a grumble, stomping out of the room.

Arthur grins as he leaves. James offers him a congratulatory look.

“It _will_ be shite,” he says with frank sympathy, a little more subdued than before. “But there’ll be canapes and champagne. And I’m friends with the organiser, so we can probably sneak out a bottle of Scotch, too.”

Arthur shrugs his good shoulder, as if admitting defeat.

“And people say there’s no money in art.”

James snorts, helping himself to the papers neatly stacked near his knee. He sifts through them with blatantly false disinterest, plucking a pen from the pocket of his shirt and circling something on the fourth page in a perfect oval.

His calm isn’t exactly forced, but it’s most certainly a front. A perfectly contained one, which Arthur is sure he can only see through because it’s impossible to believe it’s anything else.

Arthur doesn’t have to be married to understand the crippling fear of that tether snapping in two.

From the other room, they can hear Eames faffing loudly.

James just keeps reading the papers, catching up on their day’s work.

Arthur pushes himself closer to the edge of the couch. He hesitates for only a moment before he says, in a neutral shade of concern,

“James.”

James looks up at him, his gaze peeking over the rim of his glasses, that puppyish softness in his face deceptively gentle. He raises his eyebrows in question.

“Are you really OK with this?”

James’ mouth tilts, then splits into a smile. There’s a strain about his eyes, though it’s far from a lie.

“Yes,” he says, with so much as a hint of doubt. “To be honest, he’d be insufferable at the opening anyway. He’s about as subtle as a foghorn as these things. Gets all worked up and picks fights with curators.”

For some reason, Arthur rather thinks James is being incredibly literal with that one.

“I don’t want to put you guys in danger,” he says anyway.

The look James gives him is so reminiscent of Eames, a cocktail of exasperated and amused, that Arthur feels momentarily thrown.

“We’re in danger every day, Arthur,” James reminds him wryly. “And Eames has only ever had good things to say about you.”

This time it’s Arthur’s turn to snort.

“I find that hard to believe,” he says, to a cheeky look from James.

“Well,” James sighs cheerily. “I find it hard to believe that _detail-driven, debrief-obsessed perfectionist_ is an insult.”

Arthur laughs, the anxious knot in his chest loosening ever so slightly at James’ returning smile.

He follows suit when James gets to his feet, leaving the papers scattered on the floor in a haphazard fan.

He’s lovely, really, and it surprises Arthur how little he begrudges it.

From the kitchen doorway, he sees James swipe a hand over Eames’ neck; sees him arch into it like a cat seeking affection.

Arthur takes a seat the table, as James’ natural chatter fills the room as easily as the scent of basil from the windowsill.

He’s trying very hard not to be himself.

.

.


	12. nyota vi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I have an incredibly strong suspicion this story is going to get wildly out of control. I'll try **really really really hard** to get some faster updates for you all, for this and other stories, because your comments and love are wonderful and just **thank you so much.** )

.

.

**nyota vi.**

**( now)**

.

.

Yusuf’s arrival the following morning brings not only the much needed somnacin, but also a fresh, more easily tamed sense of purpose.

Gathered together, they make for a complete team. Not an entirely friendly one, perhaps.

Nevertheless, still a team that achieved something extraordinary, something very impossible. A team that have been entrusted now not only with a man’s lifelong business, but something far more intimate.

“Fine day for foul business,” Yusuf says as he brushes a forearm over a desk to sweep away imaginary dust before setting down his case.

He’s dressed in a great many layers that speak volumes of how well he’s coping with the change in climate from. The scarf around his neck has been looped at least four times, judging by the bulk of it.

Arthur gestures to the box of tea next to the coffee pot in consolation. He’s not long arrived himself, and is a little surprised by the flurrying arrival of not only their chemist, but the extractor and architect, too.

Ariadne kicks off her shoes again as soon as she enters, squeezing Yusuf’s arm in greeting before hurrying to the coffee which is hissing away in the corner.

Dom nods at them both, his hair speckled with rain that’s been indecisively hanging in the air since before dawn. He shakes Yusuf’s hand briefly, and something passes between them that is not for Arthur to interpret, so he doesn’t.

“What do we have so far?” Yusuf asks as he spreads out his work station with methodical movements.

He untucks his scarf a little, but still makes no attempt to remove it despite the blast of the radiator.

“We’ve got Zachary Shale grounded in London while he fixes up six new contracts for Sen Core’s UK subsidiaries,” Arthur says, leaning against Ariadne’s desk carefully so as not to disturb the precise arrangement of her stationary.

He crosses his arms over his chest and watches Yusuf set up, taking in the muscle memory of the way he roots through a file case.

“Which gives us at least a month before he’s likely to leave town,” he adds with a glance to Dom, who grimaces.

“Assuming he’s sticking around that long,” Yusuf points out.

Arthur nods in grim agreement.

“There’s that,” he says reluctantly. “He lives out in the country. Has a London apartment where he stays on long days but he mostly commutes. Wife and two daughters are permanent UK residents, although if he’s abroad for more than a month, they usually fly out to visit.”

“Can we predict when he’ll be at his London residence?”

This last comes from Dom, who’s emptying a small plastic bag onto a spare table.

There’s a box of biscuits, a bag of cox apples, an assortment of sweets and a plastic bottle of milk with a blue lid. Arthur thinks he should probably remember what the blue top means, but he doesn’t. He hopes it means thick as cream, though.

The entire display twinges in Arthur’s chest; reminds him of the snacks that used to litter Mal’s work station during a job. How jealously she’d guard her chips and how freely she’d give away the chocolate.

Ariadne, tinkering with the cups, eyes the biscuits with pointed interest, eyes darting to Arthur and away without comment.

“It would be far easier if we could get him alone in his flat than anywhere else,” Yusuf muses without much intent. “Perhaps we can orchestrate it.”

Arthur nods. Before he can say more on the subject however, he is warmly surprised by a steaming cup of coffee being presented to him by a smiling Ariadne, whose helpfulness, while not suspicious, is still noted with curiosity.

She’s already broken into the biscuit supply and, Arthur notices, has taken not one but all of the custard creams.

When Arthur raises a single judging eyebrow, she shrugs innocently shoves two into her mouth at once, like an absolute heathen, licking the crumbs from her lips with a smirk.

“Where’s Eames?” Cobb asks in a voice that suggests this is a question he’s already weary of asking.

“Anyone checked Scotland Yard?” Arthur asks, more out of reflex than anything else.

Unfortunately, his timing is entirely off because the answering retort from the doorway lands determinedly on the tail of his sentence, like a boot on a lazy cat.

“Now, darling, you know that’s not where they’d take me.”

He’s wearing the same suit as yesterday.

Even for Eames, this is something of a new low, not to mention the poorly smoothed out tangle of his hair. Before Arthur can voice an opinion, however, Ariadne has already let out a welcoming chuckle that it would be rude to negate with criticism.

“Prison couldn’t hold you, Eames?” she teases.

“It didn’t,” Eames replies with a cool smile as he makes his way to the coffee pot via Arthur’s desk, where he drops the small black notebook he’d been scribbling in at the bar yesterday.

Ariadne’s face tells a tale of curiosity and disbelief, shrewdly narrowing her eyes at the forger’s turned back.

“Yes, yes,” Yusuf interrupts good-naturedly. “Master Criminals Anonymous, I call this meeting to order.”

Eames, who is spooning an absurd amount of sugar into his coffee, lets loose a grin.

“Of course,” Arthur says as he moves to pick up Eames’ offered notebook. “Actual master criminals don’t get caught in the first place.”

The expression Eames throws him tilts into a hungry dare that doesn’t belong anywhere that isn’t serving tequila. Beneath the crumpled suit and less than neat hair, Arthur realises there are faint bags under his eyes.

When Arthur picks up the book dropped on his desk as flicks through the notes, the reason is entirely obvious.

“You watched his house _all night?”_

“Jesus, Eames,” Cobbs grumbles. “Pace yourself, will you?”

Eames stirs his coffee with too much interest.

“Your concern is noted,” he replies. “And most heartening.”

Predictably, he promptly plucks the bag of Haribo starmix from the pile on the table near Cobb as he makes his way to the table in the corner where two windows meet. Well, at least that explains his obscene sugar intake.

“Eames, you’re not dreaming until you’ve had at least ten hours of real sleep,” Yusuf drawls without even looking up from his notes.

There’s a hint of genuine irritation in his voice as he says it, which Eames rolls his eyes at, crossing his ankles on his desk and tipping his chair back into the crook of the corner behind him.

“Such a worrier,” he says with a shrug at Ariadne, who throws a custard cream at him.

He catches it in a one hand wave, and drops it with disgraceful intent into his coffee, only to fish it out sodden ad stained a few seconds later.

Arthur has a strong suspicion this some sort of precursor to sociopathy. Nobody is that poorly house trained.

“One of these days, I’m going to accidentally put you in a _coma,_ you careless sod,” Yusuf bites back, a breathless chuff of not-quite-laughter to his words.

“Can that actually happen?” Ariadne asks, catching the cola bottle sweet Eames throws her.

“Maybe,” Eames replies at the exact same time that Yusuf says, _“Absolutely.”_

Ariadne immediately looks to Arthur, then, and he tries very hard not to feel too smug that even two years later, he’s still her number one source of information.

Unfortunately, in this particular instance – while there’s no doubt Eames is being entirely too flippant – he thinks it’s probable that Yusuf is exaggerating just a little bit.

He jerks one shoulder, nods at Yusuf and says sternly,

“Eames, get some sleep.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Eames replies in a voice that might have been cruel, if it hadn’t been punctuated by a very deep yawn.

Yusuf throws Eames a look not at all dissimilar to the one he’d given his demon of a cat after it clawed Arthur’s hand.

Arthur flicks through the notebook with one hand, perching on his own desk and sipping his coffee.

He doesn’t get through more than six lines of observations, however, trying his level best not to look impressed, before he looks up at the forger again.

“Eames, did you break into his house?”

Ariadne snorts into her cup, while Eames looks mildly despairing from where he stands between two large A-boards.

“It’s the first day,” Arthur’s pretty sure the extractor mutters under his breath.

“No,” Eames scoffs, draining his coffee in several large gulps.

“How else do you know he’s sleeping in the spare room?”

Eames twitches his nose, fishing distractedly through his bag of sweets for gummy bears like they aren’t all made of the same additives.

“Educated guess,” he says haughtily, throwing another cola bottle at Ariadne.

It speaks untold volumes of Eames’ reputation for educated guesses, that Cobb, for all his dark muttering, is already writing this on the A-board he’s labelled _HOME/FAMILY_ without further confirmation.

“Do we know what contracts he’s working on yet?” Cobb asks, recapping the purple marker pen and tossing it between his hands.

“Three private, one government, one bank, one personal,” Arthur says, rooting through the files behind him for the summary he’d been sent from Saito’s personal account last night.

“Lots of fingers, lots of pies,” Cobb says with a whistling sigh through his teeth.

“Does it matter?” Yusuf asks.

“We don’t know if Reika’s murder was personal or business,” Arthur says, toying with a page in Eames’ notebook.

Halfway through a sentence, his handwriting morphs several angles, and Arthur stares at the two different types of _k_ with idle curiosity.

“Seems quite personal to me,” Yusuf mutters, to which Arthur has no response.

He turns his attention properly to the words on the page, and not the handwriting it’s written in.

Across the room, he can hear Ariadne and Cobb speaking in low voices. Whether the conversation is about the job or the custard creams is anyone’s guess, and Arthur sees from the corner of his eye Eames throwing two more sweets in the architect’s direction.

The irrefutable truth of Yusuf’s words echoes through his thoughts.

It _is_ personal. The problem is, if it’s directly linked to Reika’s job as an executive of Sen-Core, then she was killed because of who she was. If it’s not, though, then they killed her because of who she was to Saito, regardless of her position in his company.

The idea burns at the underside of his heart, a dark and unreachable place.

He thinks about Saito’s voice on the phone, delicate, as smooth and confident as two years ago. If Arthur hadn’t seen the photograph of his wife’s throat slashed open in their bedroom, the carpet stained and her eyes wide open, he’d never have guessed he was anything other than cautiously concerned.

Distracted as he is by thoughts of Saito, the unshakeable wielding of his willpower, which Arthur has perhaps never fully appreciated, he almost doesn’t realise what he’s reading in his hands for several moments.

Then,

“You’re joking,” he starts, looking back to the corner of the room with alarm.

Eames’ smile rarely shows actual delight. It’s the thing of snake charmers; a bully and a temptation. When he smiles now, it’s that brittle and hard look that Arthur detests.

“What?” Cobb asks, looking between Eames and Arthur with familiar frustration.

Arthur, for his part, is too busy staring down at the notes Eames has jotted at an acute angle diagonally across the page. His suspicion rises.

“You _did_ break into his house,” he says with derision.

“Just the garage,” Eames scoffs, as if this doesn’t count at all.

“That still counts, you know,” Yusuf drawls, then stares thoughtfully at the love heart sweet Eames throws into his desk.

“You’re lucky it wasn’t alarmed,” Arthur says, unable to hide his frustration.

“No, Arthur,” Eames snaps with a smirk. “Just lucky Mr and Mrs Shale fall into the eighty-four percent of married couples who use their anniversary as their alarm code.”

Cobb has moved over to Arthur’s desk, and takes the book out of Arthur’s hand impatiently. Arthur narrows his eyes and in a feat of true willpower does not demand to be given a gummy bear.

“Did you just make up a statistic?” Ariadne pipes up, receiving another of Eames’ deceitful smiles in response.

Luckily, Cobb is not going to distracted from the issue at hand as everyone else, for which Arthur is entirely grateful.

“You’re sure they were addressed to Rhys Merton?” Cobb asks.

Eames’ expression is little more than pure disdain.

“Seventeen boxes lining the wall of his garage, all tightly sealed. No idea what’s inside the, but I had not way of re-sealing them. They were heavy, though.”

“Who’s Rhys Merton?” Yusuf asks.

“He used to work for Sen-Core. He didn’t leave on good terms,” Arthur replies, his eyes lingering on the book in Cobb’s hands. “It was sent to Shale’s _home?”_

Eames, happily rooting through his Haribo bag, doesn’t look at him.

“Might be nothing,” he says through another poorly stifled yawn.

“Might be collusion,” Arthur counters.

“We need a way in,” Cobb says, possibly to move the conversation along but equally likely to stop it in its tracks.

Arthur meets his gaze, a steady exchange of understanding passing through them. He’d forgotten, maybe, the easy parts of working with Cobb, in the wake of how difficult it eventually became.

“I’ll check out who Shale’s talking to about these contracts,” he says, hopping off the desk and moving around it to sit at his laptop.

The private contracts will be the easiest to infiltrate, he figures, depending on how large the companies are. At the very least, he needs to give Eames enough leeway to blend into the crowd of the building, if it comes to that.

He looks over at Eames, startled to realise he’s looking directly at him.

Eames blinks, otherwise undisturbed at being caught. He throws something in a soft underarm, then another, then another.

Arthur looks down and stares obtusely at the three yellow gummy bears.

When he looks back up, Eames has put his mug and sweets on the table, and has closed his eyes with his hands clasped on his stomach. Sometimes, Arthur is still surprised by Eames’ catlike ability to nap anywhere he finds more than a square foot of space.

He doesn’t realise he’s staring until he’s surprised by a hand on his shoulder. If Ariadne notices his flinch, she’s tactful enough not to mention it.

“I’m going to check out some of the offices on Saito’s list,” she says, her coat in her hand and her shoes back on.

Arthur nods, and they quietly arrange to check in with each other later in the day.

This leaves only the offbeat sounds of Yusuf tinkering idly and the occasional squeak of the whiteboard pen Cobb is using to transcribe some of Eames’ notes for general viewing.

Arthur glances one last time at Eames.

His chin has dipped onto his chest; his breaths are slow and deep. Arthur picks up one of the gummy bears and throws it back, where it lands on his torso, at the stopping point of his clasped hands.

Without so much as opening his eyes to check, Eames raises his middle finger at Arthur, then returns to his sleeping position.

Arthur smirks, returns to his laptop and gets to work.

.

.


End file.
